Safeguarding the future of U.S. agriculture
The need to conserve threatened collections of crop diversity worldwide

Calvin O. Qualset
Research Professor, Professor Emeritus
Interim Director, Agriculture Sustainability Institute
Genetic Resources Conservation Program
Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources
University of California

Henry L. Shands
Director
USDA-ARS National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation

Report released on February 28, 2005 at a congressional briefing in Washington DC

SUMMARY

The productivity of US agriculture is legendary, and the value of US agricultural commodities (i.e. food and fiber) exceeds $191 billion at the farm level—before the considerable added value of processing and marketing. Underlying this impressive output is a little-known resource—collections of seeds and other living plant
material stored in crop genebanks around the world. These collections hold thousands of varieties of hundreds of crops. They represent the historic and current diversity of agriculture, without which farming in the US and around the world would stagnate and flounder.

Today, as new and re-emerging pests and diseases threaten to damage or even wipe out entire crop types, and with the market forever demanding new and improved crop varieties, these collections take on added importance to US and world agriculture.

The stakes are high, particularly when it comes to fighting crop diseases. With soybean rust poised to take a $1 billion bite out of the US soybean market each year, potato blight costing American farmers $400 million annually, and many other crop species facing costly attacks, plant breeders are under pressure to provide new resistant varieties of crops. To do so they need access to as much genetic variation as possible.

The problem is, despite their value, many crop diversity collections are struggling to survive, particularly in developing countries. And those collections, which can include crops that have been cultivated for centuries and their rare wild relatives, may be the most important ones of all.

For although US industry and government facilities maintain impressive collections of crop varieties grown domestically, the answer to many crop woes may be found in an obscure variety cultivated—or even growing wild—in Asia, Africa, South America or the Middle East. Today, the source pathogen causing a crop disease in the United States may likewise be traced to a distant region. And the solution may lie in genetic traits contained in a crop variety or wild plant growing there as well.

US agriculture needs the genetic resources of collections of crop diversity around the world to combat pests and diseases and to adapt to environmental changes.

In the United States, pests and plant diseases are conservatively estimated to exact a toll of $20-$33 billion each year nationwide. And, while plant pathogens are older than agriculture itself, several recent trends increase the risk that an unforeseen pest or disease will cause widespread damage to US crops:

• Spreading monocultures and genetic uniformity. When a few successful crop varieties replace the great diversity of crops and types found in farmers’ fields, vast acres of a genetically uniform crop become more vulnerable to pests.
• Genetic changes within pathogens or insect pests. Pathogens or insect pests that mutate to overcome a crop’s innate resistance or to escape the effects of fungicides and pesticides, together with monoculture conditions, heighten the risk that such novel pests could rapidly spread, causing great losses in crop yield and quality.
• Increased risk of introduced pests. The increased volume of global travel and of food imports heightens the risk of accidental introductions of plant pests. In addition, there is growing concern about the threat of intentional
  introductions.
• Increasingly volatile weather and climate change. Prolonged droughts, heavier rainfall, or changes in temperatures may present new challenges to crops and allow pests to expand into new regions.

Overall, a failure to maintain the genetic diversity in crop species could have staggering consequences for both US and global agriculture. Diseases of current and potential concern in major US crops include the following:

• A disease caused by a rust fungus that is now invading US soybean fields. The disease can cause yield losses of up to 80 percent, threatening what was in 2003 an $18 billion soybean harvest.
• Potato blight of the kind that caused the Irish potato famine has re-emerged to threaten the American potato industry, where it is already destroying $400 million worth of potatoes each year.
• US corn production, worth $30 billion annually, is facing multiple assaults from several different diseases, including some that recently have emerged abroad and appear capable of crossing borders with ease.
• A new strain of rice blast disease appears to be emerging with the ability to overcome the resistance that current rice varieties have to this disease.
• Fusarium head blight, or scab, has already caused $3 billion in damage to the US wheat and barley industries. New sources of resistance are needed to protect these crops.
• The $1.8 billion US apple industry is vulnerable to destructive bacteria causing the disease called fire blight, which is now showing resistance to pesticides that once controlled it.
• All types of citrus cultivated in the U.S., where they generate $2 billion annually, are vulnerable to diseases such as citrus canker and citrus blight.

In each of these cases, plant scientists are searching through domestic and international crop diversity collections to find genetic resistance to these diseases. Once those sources are identified, breeders can begin developing new diseaseresistant crop varieties.

But the importance of crop diversity to US agriculture goes beyond the fight against disease. Farmers today also must have access to new crops and more diversity within each crop family if they are to stay abreast of a rapidly evolving market.

US agriculture needs global collections of crop diversity to improve the health value of foods and to meet changing consumer demand.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has noted several major food trends in America today: higher incomes are spurring demand for higher quality foods; an aging population wants healthier foods; increasing numbers of people want organically-grown foods; and an increasingly diverse population desires foods used in ethnic dishes. In each case, satisfying consumer demand will depend on access to the genetic diversity of crops.

For example, consumer interest in health has sent farmers in search of crop varieties that have enhanced nutritional value, and for varieties of newly popular exotic produce that are adaptable to US growing conditions. Maintaining the rapid growth of organic food production in the U.S.—now an $11 billion industry—is especially dependent on genetic variation. When disease or pests threaten, strict prohibitions on using pesticides or genetically modified varieties make naturally obtained disease resistance one of the few alternatives available to organic farmers.

The United States has a stake in conserving global crop diversity as a means to help solve the related problems of economic development, hunger, and environmental quality in the developing world.

A United Nations (UN) report recently cited the importance of genetically improved crop varieties and native crop genetic resources as a way to boost production on subsistence farms, where half of the world’s 800 million chronically hungry people now reside.

Crop varieties stored in genebanks are also playing a prominent role in reinvigorating agricultural production in areas hit by the 2004 tsunami and in post war Afghanistan and Iraq, just as they did in Cambodia following the ravages of the Khmer Rogue and in Rwanda following that country’s ethnic genocide. There is clearly a large demand for the services provided by genebanks, whether to maintain the economic vitality of US agriculture, meet constantly evolving market demands, or, by spurring recovery in areas suffering from war or natural disaster, to enhance global security.

But international crop diversity collections are under stress, and global capacity is not keeping pace with demands. For example, of the 1,460 facilities housing collected materials, only 35 meet international standards for long-term storage. In 1996, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that up to 1 million of the 5.4 million samples held in the world’s collections are degenerating, and that number has increased in the years since. Many collections are losing vast amounts of genetic material through mundane but devastating events such as power outages, a lack of resources to regenerate decaying seed in old collections, and disease spreading within collections.

Broader recognition of the important role played by crop diversity collections is needed to spur a concerted effort directed toward their conservation and use. With all the modern pressures working to diminish crop diversity, now is also a time of exciting scientific discoveries that can greatly improve the performance of genebanks in assisting global agricultural production. In particular, the molecular tools of plant biotechnology allow scientists to screen plant samples for genes of interest and to then isolate this material and use it to breed new, improved varieties.

Conservation is forever.

Ultimately, the responsibility for safeguarding the world’s collections of crop diversity should fall to governments, international organizations, and the private sector acting in partnership to conserve this international public good in perpetuity. The scope of the task, its long-term nature, and the need for genebanks to be easily accessible to researchers and farmers all require strong public involvement.

A solution is at hand. Established in 2004, the Global Crop Diversity Trust is one vehicle for sustaining this partnership. The Trust is an independent international organization with the goal of assuring the long-term security of the world’s most important collections of crop diversity. It is the product of a partnership between the FAO and the 15 Future Harvest Centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The Trust is building a $260 million endowment, through donations from national governments, philanthropic foundations, and private corporations, the interest income of which will be used to fund the costs of crop diversity conservation into perpetuity, as well as to salvage collections at risk and build the capacity of developing countries to manage their collections.

In an age when all agriculture is interconnected—whether by trade, the exchange of genetic resources, or the spread of disease—the economic vitality of US agriculture and, indeed, of global food security are inextricably linked to the fate of crop genebanks around the world. While crop genebanks may seem to be obscure facilities that are largely invisible to the general public, the effects of their degradation, if allowed to continue, will soon be apparent to us all.

Since crop genebanks around the world are so critical for sustaining the US food supply system and a major sector of the US economy, full support for the Global Crop Diversity Trust and its conservation goals is essential.

Full document in PDF format (4.77Mb):
http://www.grcp.ucdavis.edu/publications/docSafeAg/SafeguardingFutureUSAg.pdf