Overview of Cassava Special Issue N. J. Taylor & C. M. Fauquet & J. Tohme Published online: 8 March 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 At the Second Strategic Meeting of Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st Century (GCP21), a decision was made to publish a series of papers highlighting major emerging challenges to cassava production, recent advances in cassava genetic improvement and the new tools and platforms being created for the crop. The present issue of Tropical Plant Biology brings together ten such papers based on information presented at Bellagio in Novem- ber 2010, in addition to a description of the goals and priorities of GCP21. Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) originated in South America, but is now a major staple throughout the tropics. Grown in more than 100 countries, cassava production has increased steadily over the last 50 years to reach more than 240 Mt per annum by 2009, with more area committed to cultivation of the crop than of Solanum potato. Cassava remains popular among re- source poor farmers mostly due to its tolerance to poor soils and drought, and its flexible harvest window, which can be as long as 30 months after planting. When and where other crops fail, cassava provides a source of calories when needed, making it the food security crop par excellence. Cassava is also produced on significant scales as an industrial crop in Asia, India and South America, and holds significant potential to develop in a similar manner in sub-Saharan Africa, where it could be an important com- ponent of economic development. Cassava research and development has lagged behind the world’ s other major staples due to its perception as a “poor man’ s crop” and the fact that it is not cultivated within industrialized, northern agricultural systems. The crop now faces two major challenges in terms of re- search and development investment; 1) to substantially increase understanding of the basic biological processes of this storage root crop and 2) bringing solutions to crucial and urgent constraints limiting cassava produc- tion. The first issue requires the development and coor- dination of an array of modern tools essential for the future development of the crop, and the second requires coordinating this knowledge and the technologies gained to produce enhanced planting materials for farmers and breeders to exploit. Cassava and the Challenges of Global Climatic Change It is not an easy task to predict the impact of climate change on world agriculture, nor in Africa where cassa- va’ s production and role is greatest. Andrew Jarvis and co-authors at CIAT have modelled different scenarios pro- ducing predictive maps for cassava cultivation across the continent by the year 2030. They conclude that “cassava is potentially highly resilient to future climatic changes and could provide Africa with options for adaptation whilst other major food staples face challenges.” However, shifting patterns of disease and pest pressure will bring challenges to securing cassava production in some regions. As models improve, we will certainly gain more accurate predic- tions of the crop’ s changing role in food and economic secu- rity in Africa. The community must exploit these new techniques to generate this type of information, allowing it N. J. Taylor (*) : C. M. Fauquet International Laboratory for Tropical Agricultural Biotechnology (ILTAB), Danforth Plant Science Center, 975N. Warson Rd., St. Louis, MO 63132, USA e-mail: ntaylor@danforthcenter.org C. M. Fauquet e-mail: iltab@danforthcenter.org J. Tohme International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), AA 6713 Cali, Colombia e-mail: j.tohme@cgiar.org Tropical Plant Biol. (2012) 5:1–3 DOI 10.1007/s12042-012-9098-5