Symposium on centers of plant diversity and the conservation of crop germ plasm

Abstract

The Society for Economic Botany, in cooperation with the International Biological Program ( USIBP/UM ), organized a symposium for the AIBS meeting, Columbus, Ohio, on September 5, 1968, to focus attention on the urgent need to protect, conserve, and properly utilize the world's plant resources. The Symposium was designed to support the recommendations of the 1967 FAO Technical Conference on Exploration, Utilization, and Conservation o.f Plant Gene Resources. This Conference, jointly sponsored by FAO/UN and the International Biological Program, concentrated on the world's rapidly dwindling genetic resources and urged national action to reverse this depletion of our germ plasm base. The Symposium provided a forum for alerting a segment of the U.S. biological community to our dependence on foreign sources of crop germ plasm and the needs for national and international cooperation in rescuing and conserving these irreplaceable resources. Although much is known of the origins and centers of diversity of our crop plants, American biologists were asked to consider how best to sample this diversity, ways and means to utilize germ plasm, conserve it for the future, and be alert to opportunities for international cooperation in these efforts. The Symposium was prompted by the realization that the problem of dwindling germ plasm resources is not being attacked in the United States in a coordinated fashion. There are Federal and other agency programs involved with the introduction, evaluation, and conservation of crop germ plasm. Some of these have been in effect for many years and provide a basic service to American plant science, but they have not pooled their efforts for maximum impact on this broad problem. There has been some encouraging progress. Recently, a Crop Evolution Laboratory was established at the University of Illinois. The mission of this Laboratory is largely concerned with the origins and evolution of cultivated plants and their relationships to wild relatives. The work of the Laboratory will nicely complement action programs for the collection and objective evaluation of crop breeding stock. There are also provisions in the Plant Gene Pools objectives of USIBP/UM to. give leadership to this over-all problem area and to develop national working groups to implement the broad recommendations of the International Biological Program. Thus, IBP is promoting international recognition of the problem and is providing a framework for more meaningful cooperation on a worldwide basis. Subjects and speakers for the Symposium were carefully selected to provide as complete a picture as possible of the scope, complexity, and urgency of the prob-