Teaching agrobiodiversity : a curriculum guide for higher education

Agrobiodiversity, which includes the diversity of plants, animals, fish, trees and microbes that are used directly or indirectly for food and agriculture, is the foundation of sustainable agricultural development. But demand has grown for new knowledge and skills to address the multifunctionality of sustainable agriculture and the interconnectedness of biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and human health. To address the need for this new capacity, Biodiversity International and its partners in higher education networks started a process to analyze the knowledge and skills required to equip a new cadre of researchers, development experts, policy specialists and teachers to carry out interdisciplinary research and development interventions on agricultural biodiversity. The result is this publication -- an annotated "road map" for educational organizations interested in introducing an agrobiodiversity component into the academic curriculum of courses and programmes at either the undergraduate or graduate level.