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January 28, 2008
Thousands of wild and cultivated
varieties of potato and sweetpotato from the genetic bank the
International Potato Center (CIP) keeps in trust in Lima, at the
end of January will be sent to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault
(SGSV) in Norway. In this facility will also be stored other
important food, forage and agroforestry crops from different
parts of the world.
The SGSV
initiative is an international effort to safeguard the
agricultural heritage of humanity in case of a disaster
endangering global food security. The seed vault has been
established by the government of Norway as a service to the
world community and will begin operations within a few days.
Global Crop Diversity Trust, an international NGO located in
Rome, will fund ongoing maintenance and running costs.
The vault
has been constructed on a mountain deep in the Arctic permafrost
located in the village of Longyearbyen, on a remote island of
Norway's Svalbard archipelago, close to the Arctic Circle. The
facility will contain seed duplicates from the international
centers of the Consultative Group for the International
Agricultural Research (CGIAR) located in Benin, Colombia,
Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, and
Syria. Collectively, the CGIAR centers maintain 600,000 plant
varieties in crop genebanks, which are widely viewed as the
foundation of global efforts to conserve agricultural
biodiversity.
The potato
and sweetpotato seed to be sent will include most representative
varieties of the world, adaptable to different agroecological
conditions, reported CIP sources in Lima. "The material will be
sent in the form of botanical seed, because this is the best
form for long-term conservation," pointed out Charles Crissman,
CIP Deputy Director General for Research.
"We've
made a careful selection of the material to be sent, so that it
is highly representative of the rich biodiversity of potato and
sweetpotato both in the wild and cultivated. We've included
samples unique in the world, which only exist in the world
collection CIP keeps in trust for humanity", he pointed out.
In
addition to potato and sweetpotato, other food crops that will
be stored in the vault include rice, cassava, wheat, maize and
beans, explained the speakers during the presentation of the
initiative on Wednesday, 23 January in Mexico City. "Many
traditional landraces of these crops would have been lost had
they not been collected and stored in genebanks", said Cary
Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Fund.
This NGO will cover the costs of preparing, packaging, and
transporting CGIAR seeds to the Arctic.
Storage of
all seeds at Svalbard will be available to ensure food security
in the event a manmade or natural disaster threatens
agricultural systems, or even the genebanks themselves, at any
point in the future.
"We need
to understand that genebanks are not seed museums but the
repositories of vital, living resources that are used almost
every day in the never-ending battle against major threats to
food production", said Emile Frison, Director General of
Bioversity International, located in Rome, one of the CGIAR
centers. He coordinates CGIAR crop diversity initiatives. "We
are going to need this diversity to breed new varieties that can
adapt to climate change, new diseases, and other rapidly
emerging threats", he added.
Why are
genebanks important?
The CGIAR
collections are famous in plant breeding circles as a treasures
trove for plant breeders searching for traits to help them
combat destructive crop diseases and pests that destroy the
crops.
Just from
January to August 2007, CGIAR centers distributed almost 100,000
samples. The materials mainly go to researchers and plant
breeders seeking genetic traits to create new crop varieties
that offer such benefits as higher yields, improved nutritional
value, resistance to pests and diseases and the ability to
survive changing climatic conditions, which are expected to make
floods and droughts more frequent.
Thus, in
Peru, to date about 1,300 virus-free native potato varieties
from the genebank have been distributed to 44 Andean
communities. Producers have increased their yields by an average
of 30 percent thanks to this technique.
Furthermore, these collections have often been used to help
restore agricultural systems after conflicts and natural
disasters. For example, after the 2004 tsunami in Asia, the
International Potato Center sent to Indonesia 12,000 cuttings of
sweetpotato adapted to saline soils that were of great help to
grow food and to restore the soil balances. Two years earlier,
CIP joined with three other CGIAR centers to provide potato seed
adapted to the conditions of Afghanistan, where the prolonged
war has devastated farming areas.
"Svalbard
Global Seed Vault is a very important initiative for humanity
because it will serve to preserve food for the future", told CIP
Deputy Director General for Research. "It is also a gene reserve
of great value for the improvement work that will be needed with
changes-including climatic change, that will occur in the
future", he added.
"Furthermore, it is a great backup for the genebanks that
already exist, because having a new foundation for global
storage reduces the risks of losing the collections due to any
circumstances that might occur," said Crissman.
Unfortunately, in spite of the great service that genebanks
provide to humanity, they are not free from attacks. Thus,
Iraq's genebank in the town of Abu Ghraib, was ransacked by
looters in 2003. Fortunately there were safety duplicates at the
CGIAR center in Syria. Typhoon Xangsane caused serious damages
to the Philippine national rice genebank in 2006 but at
IRRI-CGIAR center there were duplicates in other places. With
the creation of the Global Seed Vault, humankind will be more
protected from such eventualities.
For more
information, consult the Norway government website:
http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/lmd/campain/svalbard-global-seed-vault/
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (www.cgiar.org
<http://www.cgiar.org>)
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR), established in 1971, is a strategic partnership of
countries, international and regional organizations and private
foundations supporting the work of 15 international agricultural
research Centers. In collaboration with national agricultural
research systems, civil society and the private sector, the
CGIAR fosters sustainable agricultural growth through
high-quality science aimed at benefiting the poor through
stronger food security, better human nutrition and health,
higher incomes and improved management of natural resources.
The Global
Crop Diversity Trust (www.croptrust.org)
The mission of the Trust is to ensure the conservation and
availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide.
Although crop diversity is fundamental to fighting hunger and to
the very future of agriculture, funding is unreliable and
diversity is being lost. The Trust is the only organization
working worldwide to solve this problem.
The
International Potato Center (www.cipotato.org)
The International Potato Center (CIP) seeks to reduce poverty
and achieve food security on a sustained basis in developing
countries through scientific research and related activities on
potato, sweetpotato, and other root and tuber crops, and on the
improved management of natural resources in the Andes and other
mountain areas. CIP is supported by a group of governments,
private foundations, and international and regional
organizations known as the Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research (CGIAR). |
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