The ExeCom, with the AFA Chairperson, visited the World Vegetable Research and Development Center located in Shanhua, Tainan, south of Taiwan. The mission of the center is to alleviate poverty in the developing world through increased production and consumption of safe vegetables.

Similar with the AsiaDHRRA’s priority target group, AVRDC also focuses on improving the livelihood of small holder farmers and rural communities. Potential areas for collaboration can be explored on the areas of capacity building, technology transfer, and utilization of AVRDC’s rich resource bank (researches, manuals and vegetable seed collection). They hope that AsiaDHRRA could help share information about AVRDC and generate feedback from the ground about their work. They are open to collaboration with CSOs subject to availability of project resources as most of their collaboration in developing countries are project-based and supported by international donors. The delegation had a fruitful dialogue with the AVRDC team headed by Dr. Yin-Fu Chang, Deputy Director General. It was capped by a visit to their field testing sites for tomato and pepper.