The State of the World’s PGRFA

I’ve spent much of the day wondering what on Earth can usefully be said about the 2nd report on the State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, published today by FAO. Not a lot, I suspect, without wading through the entire tome. So what does FAO think is important?

Jacques Diouf, Director General of FAO, had this to say:

Increasing the sustainable use of plant diversity could be the main key for addressing risks to genetic resources for agriculture.

Sorry Jacques, old chum, but I just can’t quite seem to parse that one.

The report “does not attempt to quantify biodiversity loss,” for which we must be grateful, although the press release reminds us of FAO’s estimate that “75 percent of crop diversity was lost between 1900 and 2000” and “predicts that as much as 22 percent of the wild relatives of important food crops of peanut, potato and beans will disappear by 2055 because of a changing climate.” Right.

Genebank numbers and accessions are up, so those entries in the long-term memory have to be scrubbed and updated. 1750 genebanks, 130 have more than 100,000 accessions, 7.4 million samples, 6.6 million in national genebanks, 45 percent in just 7 countries, down from 12 in 1996. But hey, that’s probably rationalisation at work, because “in 2008, the ultimate back-up of global crop diversity, the Svalbald [sic] Global Seed Vault, opened in Norway”.

Carping aside, the report is a useful compendium of country reports (each downloadable as a separate PDF) and specially-commissioned thematic background studies (ditto) all served from an easy-to-use website (although the Picture Gallery doesn’t work for me yet).

Definitely an A for effort, then.

7 Replies to “The State of the World’s PGRFA”

  1. There is a very worrying lack of information on international movement of genetic resources. The exception is CGIAR institutes, which moved over half a million samples in two years, as they have done for decades, but that’s about it. Reported movement is mainly within countries.
    There is also a very strong trend for only developed countries and the CGIAR to deposit in Svalbard. The need, surely, is for FAO to get developing countries moving samples around and also into Svalbard.
    Only a `D – could do better’, from me.

  2. Good points. Such an opportunity presented itself to international organizations recently. To facilitate the movement of tried and tested resistant germplasm from the Pacific to deal with a new disease outbreak in Cameroon. Wonder what the outcome of that was?

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