CIMMYT Milpa Demonstration Garden celebrates the culture and history of landraces

by Carolyn Cowan

The ‘Milpa Demonstration Garden’ outside the genebank offices is flourishing this year. Planted and managed by the CIMMYT germplasm bank staff, this project has been providing color and charm at the El Batan campus through the late summer for several years.

The motivation for the project is to provide a talking point that links the rigorous science of CIMMYT’s largely monoculture-based research work with traditional Mesoamerican polyculture, known as milpa. Typically, the milpa agricultural system is centered on three main crops – often termed the ‘three sisters’ – maize, beans and squash.