Nibbles: Vavilov double, Huge avocado, African urban ag, Agarwood threat, Double coffee, Sequencing beer, Sloane ranges, Chinese bees, Gendered breeding, Access to seeds/meds, Genebank funding, Quinoa prices, Organic ganja

One Reply to “Nibbles: Vavilov double, Huge avocado, African urban ag, Agarwood threat, Double coffee, Sequencing beer, Sloane ranges, Chinese bees, Gendered breeding, Access to seeds/meds, Genebank funding, Quinoa prices, Organic ganja”

  1. “Bioversity DG lobbies for genebanks”. The report of the DG of Bioversity (her 8th paragraph) is obscure on just what happened to a planned Future Harvest endowment of 2001.
    In 2001 a consultant report commissioned by the `Future Harvest Centres’ of the CGIAR noted: “There was unanimous support for creating a sustainable financing mechanism for the Future Harvest genebanks.” Elsewhere in the report the purpose was to: “support the conservation of plant genetic resources collections held in trust for humanity, and the development of a blueprint for a rational global genebank system”. Note that the `in trust’ collections are those in the CG genebanks; only a `blueprint’ was envisaged for other genebanks.
    In some way over 2001 and 2002 the endowment fund for the CG genebanks was given to the Crop Trust: a series of GRPC meeetings (11, 12, and 13) documents this. So we ended up with, what was it, the need to support 1760 genebanks all over the place: not possible.
    As the CG genebanks send out over 93% of all samples under the Treaty SMTA, CG genebanks managers should be asking the Crop Trust and FAO: “Please can we have out Endowment Fund back?”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *