Category: Funding

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Africa gets behind genebanks

The African Union Commission organized a Seed Summit under the theme “Resilient Seed Systems for a Food Secure Africa”, hosted by the Kingdom of Eswatini from 5-7 October 2026.

The results are summarized in the Ezulwini Outcome Document, which includes the following:

Given the precarious state of many national genebanks, it’s really good to see the call to “strengthen and sustainably finance…” them “…in Member States.” Though I would have preferred to see that phrased as “…by Member States.”

The document is a ministerial outcome that I believe still has to go through AU policy organs for validation and endorsement, so nothing here is binding yet. It sets no funding figures, timelines or locations for the continental genebank, and it uses verbs like “support” and “request” rather than “establish.” Nevertheless, the recognition of the importance of genebanks is very welcome. We will keep a beady eye on how this develops.

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Good news from Beltsville?

After the recent worrying announcement about the USDA closing the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, there may now be some good news. US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has just announced a $180 million Seed Sovereignty Initiative to genotype collections of “major crops” in the National Plant Germplasm System, which holds more than 600,000 accessions of over 16,000 species. The two-year programme aims to reveal useful traits, identify gaps in the collections, and accelerate the development of new varieties. That’s a substantial investment in resources that are all too often taken for granted.

But the language is worth a closer look. This is framed as a matter of seed sovereignty and national security: the United States must not depend on “foreign adversaries” for its agricultural production, while foreign competitors are busy sequencing genetic resources. The emphasis is on turning America’s crop diversity collections, which are in the Multilateral System of the Plant Treaty, into a strategic national asset, and giving American farmers a competitive advantage.

None of that makes the investment unwelcome. Better genetic characterization could benefit researchers and breeders well beyond the United States, provided the resulting information is accessible. And understanding what genebanks hold, and what remains missing, is precisely the sort of work that should have been a priority all along.

Still, there is a difference between recognizing the strategic importance of crop diversity and treating it as a weapon in geopolitical competition. Will this initiative strengthen the shared knowledge base on which global crop improvement depends, or will national advantage determine what gets studied, shared and used? The $180 million investment is good news. The rhetoric, and the priorities it may signal, deserve rather more scrutiny.

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Nibbles: Historical photos, Belgian pears, Miombo fruits, Kenya seed treble, Nepal landraces, Women

  1. Haga Hideo’s 1950s photos of Fukushima farming rituals are now being used to revive them: ex situ conservation, but for culture.
  2. Long before photography, or “pre‑breeding” was a buzzword, Belgian pomologist Jean‑Baptiste Van Mons was running massive pear selection trials and gifting us Beurré Bosc and Doyenné Boussock.
  3. As Southern Africa’s miombo woodlands shrinks, scientists are cloning wild trees so the fruit — and food security — outlive the forest. Now for the pre-breeding.
  4. Greenpeace Africa’s Seed Project makes the case for indigenous seeds as a route to farmer independence. And you can help.
  5. And oh so coincidentally, a network of community seed banks in Kenya is rescuing indigenous seeds so the diversity is still around when opportunity (or crisis) knocks.
  6. Also in Kenya, the national genebank’s collectors are racing to secure opportunity crops.
  7. Nepal’s indigenous crops and landraces are at the same time more needed than ever, and under threat. So, much like in Kenya.
  8. The Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT says women are at the center of sustainable food systems; the fine print adds: “as they have always been.”
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The NPGS after Beltsville

The USDA has decided to close its iconic flagship site, the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) in Maryland. Everyone in plant genetic resources knows about the place simply known as “Beltsville.” Cost is apparently to blame: the agency says modernizing just 11 of BARC’s 400-plus buildings and carrying out deferred maintenance would require a $500 million one-time investment plus $40 million a year ongoing, which it calls financially unsustainable. That’s about 3 hours of US defence spending.

What does this mean for the National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS)?

The NPGS’s actual seed and other collections are already distributed across the country, and USDA is using the closure to invest in new infrastructure elsewhere, including a centralized germplasm distribution centre in Ames, Iowa. Which is good.

But what happens to the National Germplasm Resources Laboratory, a key denizen of BARC? The NGRL is not a genebank. It’s a team of people who, from Beltsville, “facilitates the acquisition, exchange, and documentation of crop genetic resources important to world food security.” In other words, it provides some of the connective tissue that turns a bunch of genebanks spread around the country into a national system.

The USDA announcement is not clear about the NGRL. It does says that research projects at Beltsville will be redistributed among other USDA locations, but not what will happen to NGRL staff and its system-wide functions. Ames will gain an important new distribution facility, but that’s not the same as the NGRL as a whole.

It will be interesting to see whether USDA moves the NGRL’s expertise and functions intact, or divides them among different locations: dispersion runs the danger of weakening the institutional knowledge of how acquisition, documentation, quarantine, distribution and international exchange fit together. For the NPGS, that may ultimately be the most important consequence of the Beltsville reorganization. Stay tuned.

LATER: Some people don’t like what’s happening.

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Nibbles: Tigray grapes, Latin American opportunity crops, Hawaii & Cayman coconuts, North Macedonian collecting, South Korea seed vault, Eswatini seed hub, Expensive healthy diets

  1. A North Macedonian professor’s 15-year rescue mission for landraces and crops surviving only in remote villages. Why bother? Stay tuned…
  2. Ancient grapevines in Tigray represent a unique genetic lineage with potential value for breeding varieties adapted to dryland conditions.
  3. Hawai’i Public Radio checks in on Maui’s coconut genebank. Useful to breed varieties adapted to really wet conditions, presumably.
  4. The Cayman Islands are also hoarding coconuts, along with lots of tasty fruits.
  5. A USD 400,000 boost from Taiwan for the Eswatini national genebank. Indigenous vegetables get much-needed love.
  6. A regional survey of 25 orphan crops across 13 Latin American countries finds quinoa and amaranth well-catalogued, but characterization budgets are the real bottleneck. Collecting and conserving in genebanks is great, but not enough.
  7. South Korea puts 330,000 seed accessions under “double lock”, hedging against both climate change and war. Conserving in one place is not enough.
  8. FAO warns that nearly a third of the world can’t afford the USD 4.28 a day that a healthy diet costs — nearly three billion people, and rising. That’s why we need al the above, I guess.