Latin America was commonly called ‘‘sleeping giant’’for its humid tropics and land base relative to its population size. The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT, by its Spanish acronym) was initiated in 1967 to serve three important zones—coastal plains, savannahs, and ‘‘hot, humid jungles.’’In line, the research areas were organized to be fitted as appropriate into these important ecological zones. Over the 50 years, CIAT has been a forerunner in developing and disseminating improved crop varieties and agricultural technologies, including its pioneering approaches in the tropics. Rewinding the history of the Center’s research accomplishments over the 50 years, partners and stakeholders’ joint efforts have brought about $40 billion in economic benefits to Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In 2019, merging the two Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centers, each known for world-class research and development (the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT), was initiated. In addition to the alliance, the CGIAR centers are going through a dynamic reformulation leading to One-CGIAR to deliver research in a phased approach targeting the CGIAR’s impact areas—food security and human welfare, such as climate change, on sustainable development goals by 2030. The CIAT’s current leadership on CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), and coleadership of the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture, and the innovative plant breeding techniques, especially, CRISPR–Cas9-mediated genome editing (GEd), and decadeslong record of CIAT for maintaining the world’s largest and most diverse collections of tens of thousands of varieties of beans, cassava, rice, and tropical forages under Future Seeds leads to new CGIAR collaborations across the countries. Since the advent of CRISPR technology in 2012, the world of molecular biology was storming with the GEd technology. The CIAT’s Advanced Breeding Platform (ABP) initiated its first testing on GEd for rice’s genetic improvement in 2015, which was laid from a collaboration with Japan’s National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences (NIAS) and the University of Melbourne, Australia. Here, we summarize the applications of the CRISPR technology in different widely grown rice varieties and other crops (Bean, Cassava, and Cocoa). The use of this technology in CIAT’s ABP is not limited to these crops, but adaptable to Banana and many other crops.