Los Baños, Philippines
March 12, 2007
The Global Crop Diversity Trust and
the International Rice Research
Institute (IRRI) unveiled an agreement today to secure the
world’s largest repository of rice varieties—conserving forever
the extraordinary diversity of arguably the world’s most
important crop. Today, about three billion people depend on rice
for their survival, with the thousands of varieties carefully
stored at IRRI providing the last line of defense between them
and possible famine–especially in times of war, natural
disasters, and attacks from pests and diseases.
The agreement offers, for the first time in the history of
modern agricultural research, stable and long-term support to an
unrivalled collection of genetic diversity of a food crop.
IRRI’s Genetic Resources Center in the Philippines houses more
than 100,000 samples of rice, representing the largest and most
important such collection in the world. The collection is kept
in a special earthquake and fire-proof facility that must be
maintained at temperatures as low as -19 degrees Celsius.
“With almost half the world’s population depending on rice, we
wanted to make sure IRRI’s genebank was insulated from the whims
of fluctuating funding,” said Dr. Cary Fowler, the Trust’s
Executive Secretary. “The agreement goes to the core of the
Trust’s mission, which is to guarantee the conservation of the
world’s crop diversity, and it’s hard to imagine a more
important crop for sustaining humanity than rice.”
Under the agreement, IRRI has pledged to invest US$400,000
annually on the gene bank, which will unlock US$200,000 from the
Trust each year. The agreement allows for inflationary increases
and will remain in force “indefinitely.” The money will go
toward, among other things, acquiring any rice varieties not
currently in the repository and making sure the storage systems
for long-term conservation are up to international standards.
This agreement—the first major conservation grant made by the
Trust—is structured to reflect the long-term vision of both
organizations. “Short-term thinking about funding has wreaked
havoc on effective conservation,” said Fowler. “This agreement
is probably unique among funding contracts in having no end
date. I am pleased that our first long-term grant protects the
crop which feeds the most people, for the longest term
imaginable-forever.”
At a special ceremony today, IRRI
also dedicated the Genetic Resources Center (GRC) to Dr. Te-Tzu
Chang, the founder of the International Rice Germplasm
Center—one of the predecessors of the GRC. Dr. Chang, who passed
away last year in Taiwan, China, was a world authority on rice
genetics and conservation and spent 30 years at IRRI collecting
and storing rice varieties from all over Asia and the world.
From now on, it will be known as the T.T. Chang Genetic
Resources Center.
“The rice genebank is not just a scientific exercise in seed
genetics but a major hedge against disaster that ensures farmers
throughout the world will always have the rice varieties they
need to maintain food security,” said Dr. Robert S. Zeigler,
IRRI’s Director General.
For example, after the Asian Tsunami, IRRI was able to reach
into its collection and provide farmers in areas which had been
under seawater with varieties of rice capable of growing in
salty soils. In addition, several countries, including Cambodia,
East Timor, India, Nepal, and the Philippines, have turned to
the IRRI genebank to restore native varieties of rice that, for
a variety of reasons, had disappeared from domestic production.
Last year, IRRI introduced a new variety of rice able to
withstand being completely submerged in a flood. And it is
playing a central role in an initiative of its umbrella
organization, the Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research (CGIAR), to develop crops that will allow
farmers to deal with the potentially devastating effects of
climate change.
According to Zeigler, this grant breaks new ground in the
funding of arguably the most important resource in the world:
“Rice diversity, like all crop diversity, is at risk for the
want of relatively small amounts of money. Given that we are
talking about is the biological base of the global food supply,
it is extraordinary that the current situation is so precarious.
The economics speak for themselves.”
An independent study estimated that adding an additional 1,000
rice samples to IRRI's genebank would generate an annual stream
of benefits to poor farmers of $325 million. “Amazingly, these
annual benefits would exceed the one-off cost of endowing the
diversity of all of the most important crops,” said Fowler.
The work by the Trust to safeguard the future of rice
cultivation is in fact one element of its broader work to secure
the full genetic diversity of all the world’s important food
crops. In addition, as part of a safe global system, the Trust
is also supporting the “fail-safe” seed vault in the Arctic—the
Svalbard International Seed Vault—that will eventually contain
every known crop variety.
Dr. Zeigler emphasized the challenge of funding such work by
saying it took IRRI decades to build up the cash reserves
necessary to match the funds from the Trust. “The Institute is
doing this using its own resources; there are no other donors
involved apart from the Trust,” he explained. “It’s also vital
that people understand that the problem does not end here. This
funding is incredibly important, but more is still needed.” For
example, funding is still needed to determine exactly how many
distinct rice varieties there are. |
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