Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 7 • Number 8 • 27th April 2007

Efforts Underway to Conserve Developing Country Crop Diversity

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The Global Crop Diversity Trust — a foundation seeking to promote food security through, among other, seed bank systems — recently announced that it had received additional funding to help conserve the seeds of key crops from developing countries.

“This initiative will rescue the most globally important developing-country collections of the world’s 21 most important food crops,” said Cary Fowler, director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust. The crops include cassava, yams, bananas and rice. Many crops grown in developing countries are referred to as orphan crops, as they have been neglected by companies that use modern approaches to crop breeding. This genetic material, used by the poor, is particularly threatened.

The new funding would “secure over 95 percent of the endangered crop diversity held in developing country gene banks, many of which are under-funded and in disrepair”. The information would also be linked to a global network.

Climate change is expected to put new demands on agriculture, and seed banks provide “insurance” by preserving a variety of genetic traits that may be useful for future breeding. Currently, agriculture is becoming increasingly homogeneous, and seed supply at a commercial scale is dominated by a few multinational companies. There are 1500 genebanks in the world, which freeze and store seeds.

“Gates Foundation Funds Efforts To Rescue 95 Percent Of World’s Endangered Critical Crop Biodiversity,” GLOBAL CROP DIVERSITY TRUST RELEASE, 19 April 2007; “Third World crops get $37.5 mln gene storage bank,” REUTERS, 19 April 2007.