Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

It turns out we do know what Cary Fowler had to say when he received the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources. It’s not on the relevant website, but it is here below, courtesy of Cary himself.

Last spring, I received an email from a graduate student at UC-Davis I had never met or communicated with before. Jorge Carlos Berny informed me that he had nominated me for the Meyer Award. Needless to say, the letter came as a surprise. So does the award.

I am so fortunate to have been mentored and befriended by many past recipients: Erna Bennett, Daniel Debouck, Geoff Hawtin, Jaap Hardon, Jack Harlan, Cal Qualset, Henry Shands, Calvin Sperling, and others. Joining their ranks is humbling. I am deeply touched and grateful.

Our crops are beginning to face dramatically new combinations of conditions for which there are few, if any, historical analogues. It’s not going to get easier for them. Our agricultural systems are likely to experience more uncertainty and surprises, and heightened risk. Plant genetic resources will be essential in facilitating the adaption of our crops to the challenges of the future. While progress has been made in conserving and making these resources available, would anyone want to argue that the genetic resources and crop breeding communities are fully prepared for what’s coming?

Too many genebank collections are poorly maintained, documented and managed today. Few are firmly connected with users. None are adequately or sustainably funded. Many cannot provide access to their materials, and more than a few simply refuse to provide access. Some of our crop collections – particularly those of minor crops – are dreadfully inadequate in size and breadth. Many crops have few if any professional breeders, making the path to adaption and improvement highly problematic unless something changes. In-situ efforts to conserve crop diversity and promote breeding are similarly challenged.

Our current genebank system is largely a creation of the 1970s, and a different political and scientific world. From a global perspective, it needs rethinking and redesign. Can we streamline conservation and reduce its costs? Can we cooperate on a division of labor amongst genebanks? Can we strengthen the link between conservation and use? Can we be more creative in promoting use?

When I joined the Global Crop Diversity Trust as its Executive Director years ago, the task as I saw it was to identify the most critical and strategic steps we could take to help create a working global system for plant genetic resources.

We first set about rescuing threatened accessions in genebanks – saving about 80,000 accessions globally. We supported the development of information systems for genebank management, as well as GRIN-Global. We built an endowment and began to make the first long-term – essentially perpetual – grants to selected international genebanks. We launched a global program to collect and conserve crop wild relatives. And, we promoted safety duplication of existing collections, most notably in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which now provides protection to more than 880,000 unique samples.

In my life and work, I have tried to make a contribution to the creation of a rational, efficient, effective and sustainable global system for conserving and providing plant genetic resources. That’s a mouthful to be sure! It was the aspiration; it is not yet the reality.

To achieve that global system we will need to create trust. In the context of trust, we will be able to realize that our goal is to conserve diversity, not institutions. It’s to share not hoard resources. No country is independent in terms of the genetic resources they need, and the changing climate ensures they will be even less so in the future. In the interdependent world in which we live, and in the more cooperative and peaceful world I want to see, one does not lose by sharing. Global and national food security depends on it.

Plant genetic resources really are a common heritage of humankind. This is the only scientifically and historically valid way to think of them, and the only basis upon which countries can come together to ensure their conservation and availability.

I wish to thank the Crop Science Society of America and the Frank Meyer Award Committee for this honor. It is considered the highest recognition one can receive in this field. That it comes from colleagues in the plant genetic resources community means more to me that I can possibly convey.

Thank you.