Category: Policy

We pointed out recently that the threat to the Pavlovsk Experiment Station’s field genebanks is not, in fact, as unique as it might seem. From Science magazine comes news that “Australia’s seed banks are tumbling like dominoes”. The report details the gradual loss of Australia’s six genebanks.

[I]n mid-2008 a bank in Adelaide holding Mediterranean forages such as alfalfa closed its doors; of its 45,000 accessions, 95% are held nowhere else in the world.

Where have we heard claims like that before?

Part of the article that I don’t understand concerns Australia’s obligations under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Is there really a mechanism to prevent free-riders, as the article suggests? If Australia cannot supply seeds from its own genebanks, because those seeds are dead, or no longer exist, will they really be blocked access to other genebanks’ accessions?

The article ends by echoing what is really the crucial point for all genebanks:

Seed banks “need long-term support that is outside grant or research support,” says Megan Clarke, chief executive of CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency and the country’s main supporter of agricultural research.

That is clearly as true in Australia as it is in Russia. And the Australians aren’t even planning to build houses where the genebanks were.