science

World Vegetable Center

World Vegetable Center is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand World Vegetable Center rather than just read about it. In short: The World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) (Chinese: 亞蔬—世界蔬菜中心), previously known as the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC), is an international, nonprofit institute for vegetable research and development. It was founded in 1971 in Shanhua, southern Taiwan, by the Asian Development Bank, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United States and South Vietnam.

Key takeaways

World Vegetable Center belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect World Vegetable Center to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of World Vegetable Center from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) (Chinese: 亞蔬—世界蔬菜中心), previously known as the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC), is an international, nonprofit institute for vegetable research and development. It was founded in 1971 in Shanhua, southern Taiwan, by the Asian Development Bank, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United States and South Vietnam. WorldVeg aims to reduce malnutrition and alleviate poverty in developing nations through improving production and consumption of vegetables.

History The World Vegetable Center was founded as the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) in 1971 by the Asian Development Bank, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United States and South Vietnam. The main campus was opened in 1973. In 2008 the center was rebranded as the World Vegetable Center. For the first 20 years of its existence the World Vegetable Center was a major global sweet potato research center with over 1,600 accessions in their first two years of operation. In 1991 the World Vegetable Center chose to end its sweet potato research due to high costs and other institutions with a tighter focus coming into existence. The WVC duplicated and transferred its research and germplasm to the International Potato Center and Taiwan Agricultural Research institute.

Research and development

The use of vegetables as crops that are of high worth is important in the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations Development Program and the World Vegetable Center. The vegetables bred by the Center can be used in poorer areas, where they can serve as an important source of income and can help fight micronutrient deficiencies. The Center's current crop portfolio focuses on several groups of globally important vegetables, according to the WorldVeg:

solanaceous crops: (tomato, sweet pepper, chili pepper, eggplant) bulb alliums (onion, shallot, garlic) cucurbits (Cucurbitaceae): (cucumbers, pumpkins) Indigenous or traditional vegetables, particularly those of Asia and Africa are another focus of research at the World Vegetable Center. Indigenous vegetables are domesticated or semi-wild vegetable crops that are grown in particular regions as an integral part of a local food system. Many of them are underutilized crops, particularly in regions where they are not native. The Center has collaborated with the Global Crop Diversity Trust and Kew Gardens to study the domestication of eggplant. The Center is believed to have the largest collection of chili peppers in the world. They have been engaged in research to find and breed climate change resistant chili pepper cultivars.

Climate change According to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), "At the World Vegetable Center, experts are looking to the wild relatives of domesticated crops to save the human diet from climate change."

Germplasm collection A collection of vegetable germplasm is kept at the World Vegetable Center, which is considered to have the largest and most diverse collection in the world. The collection itself contains more than 60,000 accessions of 442 different species collected from 156 countries. AVGRIS, the WorldVeg Vegetable Genetic Resources Information System, provides access to all the Center's data associated with germplasm conservation and management, from registration, characterization, evaluation, and seed inventory to seed distribution. A backup selection of the Center's germplasm collection is held at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway with the goal of a backup for the entire collection being in place by 2025.

See also Food and Agriculture Organization Chile Pepper Institute

References

External links World Vegetable Center African Seed Trade Association (AFSTA) International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with World Vegetable Center

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what World Vegetable Center claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to World Vegetable Center before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about World Vegetable Center ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of World Vegetable Center

In research: World Vegetable Center appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses World Vegetable Center in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: World Vegetable Center is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1971 establishments in Taiwan, Agricultural research institutes in Taiwan, Companies based in Tainan, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for World Vegetable Center outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study World Vegetable Center in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what World Vegetable Center means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain World Vegetable Center out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is World Vegetable Center in simple terms?

Why does World Vegetable Center matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study World Vegetable Center?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on World Vegetable Center.