The demand for crop genetic resources from international collections
The CGIAR is the largest consortium of crop-oriented research facilities in the world, concentrating on major crops of importance to world food security. Experts generally agree that for highly bred crops such as wheat and rice, much of the breadth of the gene pool is represented by samples held in genebanks with only a few pockets of diversity remaining in farmers’ fields. The genebank has become a modern-day "center of diversity."
Over a period of 28 years, more than 80 percent of the materials distributed by genebanks, which totaled about one million samples, went to organisations in developing countries, the vast majority being universities and national agricultural research systems. This international exchange of germplasm has increased the likelihood of introducing new materials to the genealogies of a variety, although often the genetic contribution of any particular landrace is small.
The authors conclude that the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture will help facilitate access to genebank accessions for the 35 crops (and crop complexes) and forage crops with a multilateral system. However, they also find that the treaty contains some ambiguities, and they suggest that many questions still need to be resolved to achieve its objectives.
