dioscorea.org

di•os•co•rea — a genus of monocots, mostly tropical twining herbs, characterized by its yam tubers, net-veined leaves, and often small dioecious flowers.

In response to a December 2015 Convening held by the National Science Foundation and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for their BREAD (Basic Research to Enable Agricultural Development) Program, which hosted researchers of Dioscorea (a.k.a. yam) —and other orphan crops—from all over the world, Dioscorea.org was created by CurtisLab to centralize the fields’ ongoing research. This site is intended to:

1. make information widely and easily accessible equally for both researchers and sharecroppers
2. promote collaborations—'digital intercropping'

To that end, this site is open-sourced through GitHub such that anyone can ‘push/pull’ content to the site (see instructions here) or alternatively suggest content via the Contact Page in addition to making all relevant publications easily accessible via Mendeley. We look forward to facilitating progress ‘in the field’ and bringing practical, scalable solutions to yam stakeholders around the world.