Abstract
This article analyses 25 years of data about international movements of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA), facilitated by the gene banks hosted by seven centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. It identifies trends in the movements of PGRFA for use in research and development, and describes the diversity of those resources transferred over time. The paper also presents data on the number of countries involved in the global exchanges, analyses their development status and describes their role as providers and/or recipients, providing a picture of the breadth of these global exchanges. We highlight that it is primarily developing and transition economies that have participated in the flows, and that the transferred germplasm has been largely used within their public agricultural research and development programmes. We conclude that, when provided the opportunity of facilitated access, countries will use a wide diversity of germplasm from many other countries, sub-regions and continents as inputs into their agricultural research and development programmes. We highlight the importance of enabling the continuation of the non-monetary benefits from international access to germplasm. We discuss the implications for the process of development and reform of the multilateral system of access and benefit sharing under International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
Highlights
Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA) are the basic building blocks of crop improvement and adaptation and, by extension, of food security
A system-wide database such as System-wide Information Network on Genetic Resources (SINGER) has never been established for the distribution of germplasm from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)’s breeding programmes, and, our study focuses on genebank distributions only
The average number of samples distributed per year (39,970) is below that of the U.S National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS), where total annual distributions have increased from around 120,000 (Bretting 2007) to more than 200,000 (Heisey and Day Rubenstein 2015) over the past few years
Summary
Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA) are the basic building blocks of crop improvement and adaptation and, by extension, of food security. As a result of the history of crop domestication and global dispersal and adaptation, all countries are highly dependent upon plant genetic resources located (or originally collected from) beyond their borders. Global recognition of the policy significance of interdependence on PGRFA arguably reached its zenith in 2001 when ‘interdependence’ was explicitly included in Article 11 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) as one of two criteria—the other being relevance for food security—for including crops or forages in the multilateral system of access and benefit sharing (MLS).. The system was meant to minimize transaction costs that could otherwise multiply beyond acceptable limits, given the magnitude of international exchanges of genetic resources that accompany agricultural research, development and plant breeding
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