Ethiopia and the ITPGRFA

Ethiopia’s Institute of Biodiversity Conservation (IBC) has a nice new website. Interestingly, it includes an interactive feature called BioForum. I was surprised, however, to see no reference to the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) in the section on access. Since Ethiopia has been a Party to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture since 2003, IBC should be using the SMTA for transfers of Annex 1 material, surely.

Do we need a scientific society for agricultural biodiversity?

SIRGEALC ended on Friday with a call for the establishment of a Latin American Society for Genetic Resources. Similar things have been suggested before, to no avail. The SAT21 conference recommended that an international society be set up, for example. That was seven years ago and I don´t think there´s been much talk about it since. What do you think? Do we need another scientific society?