Building a Global Plant Genetic Resources System

Abstract

The greatest challenge facing humanity today is to feed tomorrow’s population of more than 9 billion people. Production has to increase by about 70 % with the additional uncertainties associated with climate change, against a background of less land and less water being available for agriculture. More than ever before, this will require the wise use of plant genetic resources. Scientific advances such as high-throughput sequencing, marker assisted selection and direct manipulation of the genome have allowed breeders to identify traits and incorporate them into improved varieties more efficiently and more rapidly. The problem is that the genetic resources that are the foundation of these efforts are not being managed effectively. Ex-situ collections are currently scattered across roughly 1750 genebanks, many of which are in poor physical condition and which continue to be degraded as a result of insufficient and insecure funding. Many of the accessions are duplicates, which is a waste of precious resources. There is little publicly available information about the accessions. Crop wild relatives, which are so important for resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, are poorly represented in genebanks and in any case need also to be conserved in the wild so that they can continue to evolve in response to those stresses. There is an urgent need to address all these issues by building an effective global system for the conservation and use of plant genetic resources. It will require close collaboration and partnership to ensure efficiency, which in turn will require a commitment to a global system of access and benefit sharing as foreseen by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. It will require secure and sustainable funding so that we do not have to go through this process again every few decades. And it will require a global information system that guarantees access to much more useful information as well as to the accessions themselves. The challenges are many and complex. As the paper will show, we have the means to meet them, if we engage strongly now, and if we do not, we have little hope of feeding the future population adequately.