Global agricultural alliance sets its research agenda

Member states, including 13 developing countries, can decide which research groups are most relevant to their needs and join any of them, said Carter. The work across all three strands will initially focus on mitigation of greenhouse emissions, he added, and research must be clearly defined to avoid overlap with existing knowledge. Developing countries are important to the alliance, he said, because a large proportion of their emissions usually comes from agriculture. "The quickest way [developing countries] will get access [to the alliance's research], without doubt, is to become members. But if you're talking about a particular project and whether that technology will be free — we don't know yet. Those are some of the tricky issues surrounding intellectual property we have to work through in the future."