The Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) voted for wide-reaching organizational changes yesterday, establishing thematic scientific programs across 15 research centers and empowering a single trust fund to manage $500 million in annual donations. The changes prompted The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has donated to individual projects in the past, to announce a commitment to provide is already committed to providing $80 million per year for the next 5 years and will assume a seat on the newly established Fund Council [Corrected 10/12].

“A new chapter has opened in the history of the CGIAR,” says Joachim von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC, and head of CGIAR’s strategy committee. “The system is focusing on solid science and results, and getting ready to double in size by 2015.”

First established in 1971, CGIAR supports 8,000 scientists and staff in 100 countries throughout the world through partnerships with private businesses, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. Its 15 international centers were previously only loosely integrated with one another, leaving them competing for scarce resources, says Rudy Rabbinge an entomologist at Wageningen University in The Netherlands and the chair of CGIAR’s science council. The new system will establish seven thematic megaprograms, which can be funded across various centers and will cover such topics as genomics or climate change.

Although CGIAR will retain its goal of increasing crop yields in developing countries, the group will now set explicit goals for hunger reduction, which von Braun says can be better managed with its new, systemwide outlook. The Fund Council also gives developing countries a larger voice in shaping research priorities.

“For many of the donors, the simple fact that we created the new CGIAR, makes them more willing to increase their sponsorship,” Rabbinge says.

Posted on behalf of Brendan Borrell.