Source: FAO via AgBioView

Global Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building
June 12-13, 2006 - Madrid, Spain

Over the last 10 years, significant progress has been made in addressing the needs and modalities to improve the conservation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture among governments and global partners. While conservation is vital, it is not enough. Strengthening the capacity of our partners to identify and use new and more useful sources of variation for traits important to them NOW while enhancing their capacity to easily identify useful germplasm for the FUTURE is equally needed.

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (PGRFA), having its first Governing Body meeting in June 2006, supports both conservation and sustainable use of PGRFA and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of their use. There is, therefore, an important and timely opportunity to improve the balance between conservation of plant genetic resources and their effective use to meet farmer and consumer needs, address food security concerns and contribute to the Millennium Development Goals.

Sustainable utilization of PGRFA requires plant breeding strategies through continuous and effective use of germplasm through careful characterization, evaluation and documentation. Advances in biotechnology when combined with conventional techniques offer an enormous potential for developing and pursuing such a strategy. However, the lack long term support for national breeding programs, lack of access to germplasm accessions and/or promising new technologies, especially biotechnologies, and limitations of trained personnel and institutional capabilities, prevent national plant breeding programs from meeting the needs of developing countries.

The Global Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building (GIPB) is being launched to address these challenges in a concerted and systematic manner. The goal of the Initiative is to strengthen capacities of the developing countries and those with economies in transition to improve their productivity through sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture using better breeding and seed delivery systems.

The Current Situation: Why do We Need a Concerted Effort

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has been assessing national plant breeding and biotechnology capacity worldwide to provide a technical basis for defining capacity building options, and shaping strategy and development policy to strengthen plant breeding in developing countries. Massive reductions in public investment in agriculture and rural development over the last two decades has in many low-income food-deficit countries led to demise in what were often already relatively weak national plant breeding programmes. In a few cases, specialized private sector breeding programmes have filled the niche for the economically important crops. But for many crops, the capacity to effectively use PGRFA through development of improved varieties is clearly inadequate. Very often even the base benefits of the innovations and new technologies are not secure.

The trend in national capacities is providing the baseline to underpin GIPB and focus global attention on the problems that minimize the return from conservation of PGRFA and, more importantly, constrain sustainable development and biodiversity. The results of the assessment are providing a foundation for advice on what national governments need to do, and what the research and development community can do. While the global survey is ongoing, it has strongly signaled that capacity building is the key to strengthening the possibility of developing countries to develop and benefit from plant breeding for sustainable development

A Way Forward through Partnership and Action The GIPB is proposed as a multiparty initiative of knowledge institutions around the world and agencies that have a track record in supporting agricultural research for development, working with country programmes committed to developing stronger plant breeding programmes. It will support partnership of public and private sector parties from both North and South, working in concert to enhance the capacity of developing countries to improve their agricultural productivity through sustainable use of PGRFA. By no means will it be a ‘'closed shop’' and partners will encourage broad multi-stakeholder engagement.

Together with governments and stakeholders, such as the international agriculture research centers and national and regional centers of excellence, the GIPB will foster linkages with the donor’'s community, public and private sector to identify and address the needs in the area of plant breeding and related biotechnologies. It will coordinate resources available from GIPB partner institutions with developing program needs for training, germplasm and technologies for building capacity for better germplasm evaluation, improvement, and utilization in developing countries.

Governance and Guidance of the GIPB

The Initiative will operate under the policy guidance of the Governing Body of the International Treaty and seek to be an element within its Funding Strategy. Within this framework, the Initiative will align broadly with the Article 6 “"Sustainable Use of Plant Genetic Resources”". The emphasis will be on measures for capacity building and international cooperation that strengthen national plant breeding plans and programs, in particular in the developing countries and those with economies in transition.

GIPB will be launched during the first meeting of the Governing Body Meeting of the International Treaty in Madrid, Spain. To develop a plan of action and the structure of GIPB a two-day Stakeholder Forum will be held from 12-13th of June 2006, at Madrid, at the margins of the meeting of International Treaty. Results of stakeholder discussion would then be presented to the national and international delegates at the ‘'Side-Event on Tthe Global Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building’' scheduled on 14th of June 2006. Please join us for the discussion and joint planning in Madrid.

For further details contact: Food and Agriculture Organisation, Rome, Italy
- Eric Kueneman, eric.kueneman@fao.org 
- Elcio P. Guimarães, elcio.guimaraes@fao.org  

RELATED November 2006 SeedQuest editorial by Elcio P. Guimarães:

The way forward to strengthen national plant breeding and biotechnology related capacity: links between plant breeding and seed systems