CULINARY BREEDING NETWORK
Flavor Begins with Seed
The Culinary Breeding Network is a community that brings together plant breeders, farmers, chefs, and eaters around the shared work of growing better food.
The CBN Approach
We believe that great crops don’t emerge from science alone. They take many ingredients: curiosity, collaboration, time, and care. Like cooking, plant breeding is a slow and thoughtful process—one that depends on many hands, perspectives, and seasons.
The Culinary Breeding Network (CBN) brings these parts together. Through relationships, shared experiences, and storytelling, we help new crop varieties move from research fields to farms, kitchens, and markets—where they can be grown, cooked, and appreciated.
CBN fulfills this mission through collaborative research and farm-based marketing projects, creative educational tools, and joyful public celebrations that invite people into the process of crop development. We believe plant breeding and agricultural research should not remain behind the scenes. They should be visible, engaging, and open to participation—something people can see, taste, ask questions about, and help shape. Our work connects research with real life, linking the technical process of crop development to flavor, farming, culture, and community.
Some of this work happens in trials, evaluations, and collaborative research. Some of it happens around a tasting table, at a field day, in a festival crowd, or through a small publication that helps make big ideas more accessible. We create opportunities for breeders, farmers, chefs, seed growers, students, researchers, food businesses, and eaters to learn from one another and take part in the conversation. Along the way, we celebrate not only finished varieties and products, but the long, collective process of getting there.
Join the Experience
The Culinary Breeding Network is known for creating experiences that are both educational and full of life—part science fair, part food celebration. Through events, tastings, zines, storytelling, and hands-on learning, we make crop diversity tangible, delicious, and engaging.
Everyone is invited to take part. Whether you grow food, cook it, study it, sell it, or simply love to eat and learn, there is a place for you here. We believe stronger crops and stronger food systems grow through participation—and that joy, curiosity, and connection are essential ingredients in that work.
