Michael Halewood

Twenty-five years of international exchanges of plant genetic resources facilitated by the CGIAR genebanks: a case study on global interdependence

This article analyses 25xa0years 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.

Plant genetic resources collections and associated information as a baseline resource for genetic diversity studies: an assessment of the IBPGR-supported collections

Studying temporal changes in genetic diversity depends upon the availability of comparable time series data. Plant genetic resource collections provide snapshots of the diversity that existed at the time of collecting and provide a baseline against which to compare subsequent observations. The International Board for Plant Genetic Resources conducted collecting missions in 136 countries mainly between 1975 and 1995, with the result that over 200,000 samples of a wide range of taxa were collected and distributed to genebanks around the world for long-term conservation and use. Twenty-seven percent of the collected samples were crop wild relatives and 61xa0% were landraces. Given their age, geographic and taxonomic scope, these collections have great potential value for establishing historical baselines for monitoring the status of conservation or the erosion of genetic diversity. This article reports on efforts to ‘chase down’ those samples and to confirm their conservation status and whether they are publicly available. For 35xa0% of the materials, we were able to recreate a unique link between original passport data and other collecting documentation (collecting sheets and reports) with extant accessions held in genebanks. This information enables a number of important uses, ranging from the identification of potential duplicates in genebanks and the assessment of effectiveness of ex situ conservation procedures to the re-collecting and assessing of genetic erosion and temporal variation in landraces and crop wild relatives.

Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture: opportunities and challenges emerging from the science and information technology revolution

Contents Summary 1407 I. Introduction 1408 II. Technological advances and their utility for gene banks and breeding, and longer-term contributions to SDGs 1408 III. The challenges that must be overcome to realise emerging R&D opportunities 1410 IV. Renewed governance structures for PGR (and related big data) 1413 V. Access and benefit sharing and big data 1416 VI. Conclusion 1417 Acknowledgements 1417 ORCID 1417 References 1417 SUMMARY: Over the last decade, there has been an ongoing revolution in the exploration, manipulation and synthesis of biological systems, through the development of new technologies that generate, analyse and exploit big data. Users of Plant Genetic Resources (PGR) can potentially leverage these capacities to significantly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their efforts to conserve, discover and utilise novel qualities in PGR, and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This review advances the discussion on these emerging opportunities and discusses how taking advantage of them will require data integration and synthesis across disciplinary, organisational and international boundaries, and the formation of multi-disciplinary, international partnerships. We explore some of the institutional and policy challenges that these efforts will face, particularly how these new technologies may influence the structure and role of research for sustainable development, ownership of resources, and access and benefit sharing. We discuss potential responses to political and institutional challenges, ranging from options for enhanced structure and governance of research discovery platforms to internationally brokered benefit-sharing agreements, and identify a set of broad principles that could guide the global community as it seeks or considers solutions.

Using Genomic Sequence Information to Increase Conservation and Sustainable Use of Crop Diversity and Benefit-Sharing

This article describes how CGIAR centers and partners are using genomic sequence information to promote the conservation and sustainable use of crop genetic diversity, and to generate and share benefits derived from those uses. The article highlights combined institutional, and benefit-sharing-related challenges that need to be addressed to support expanded use of digital sequence information in agricultural research and development.