By 1974, IITA was working on a relatively wide range of crops; not only the current “mandate”— maize, cowpea, soybean, banana/plantain, cassava, and yam, but also sweetpotato, rice, cocoyam, lima bean, pigeonpea, winged bean, African yam bean, and velvet bean. A key development was the opening of the Genetic Resources Unit (now Genetic Resources Center, GRC) with a mission to collect, conserve, characterize, and distribute African grain legumes, rice, and root and tuber crops. The “geographical domain” of IITA was agreed to include all humid and subhumid tropical zones. The current focus of mandate crops developed in the early 1990s and included the transfer of sweetpotato work to CIP and the regional rice mandate to WARDA (now AfricaRice).
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