Valuing a Seed - Sky is the Limit

One wild tomato has contributed to a 2.4% increase in global production, worth an additional $250 million. A 0.1% increase in the solid content of a tomato is worth about $10 million a year to the processing industry in the state of California alone. Three different wild peanuts have contributed resistance to root knot nematodes that decimate harvests, costing the world's peanut growers millions of dollars in lost revenues.

A new project, to be formally launched in Sri Lanka in June 2004, specifically targets areas where plant genetic resources are facing severe threats to their survival.

Now, thanks to support from the Global Environment Facility, IPGRI researchers will be able to better conserve plant genetic resources through a new project - In situ Conservation of Wild Crop Relatives through Enhanced Information Management and Field Application - that brings together conservation efforts in five countries including Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan.

The five countries have areas of great plant diversity, and have joined international agencies such as FAO, World Conservation Union, U.N. Environment Programme, and others to implement rational, cost-effective measures to conserve wild crop relatives. The five-year project was developed by IPGRI, in strong collaboration with national partners.

Seeds are a precious resource in the fight against nature's vagaries. Plant breeders everywhere regularly turn to nature and wild relatives of crops to develop new varieties that can better withstand natural stresses such as drought, pestilence, and disease.

All five countries have ongoing conservation programs. Armenia and Uzbekistan each surveyed their crop wild relatives some decades ago and created limited protected areas with crop wild relatives being taken into account to some extent. Indeed, Armenia's Erebuni Reserve is one of few reserves in the world deliberately created to conserve crop wild relatives, in this case wild wheats. Bolivia and Madagascar have not yet fully surveyed their resources nor established reserves to protect them. Sri Lanka has conducted several projects to conserve crop wild relatives and raise awareness of their importance, but has no national strategy.

The project will facilitate sharing of experiences of the five partner countries. National information systems will be developed and decision-making processes strengthened to help set priorities and implement them. An integrated information system, to be developed with the international partners, will bring several kinds of data under a single umbrella for ease of access. To speed up conservation efforts, better information and easier access will help researchers and plant breeders to use crop wild relatives, in turn contributing to increasing awareness of their value and thus the desirability of enhancing conservation measures. Using participatory approaches, the project will also address tough questions of access and benefit sharing.

For more information, www.ipgri.org