The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is currently in the process of moving thousands of crop varieties from Kenya and other parts of world for safe keeping in a gene bank in Norway where a repository of last resort for humanities agricultural heritage has been built.

The seedlings of crops such as rice, wheat, beans, sorghum, sweet potatoes, chick peas, lentils, forage and agro forestry plants will be shipped to a remote island near the Arctic Circle , where they will be stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), a facility capable of preserving their viability for thousands of years.

The seedling will contain duplicates from international agricultural research centres based in Kenya, Benin, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Colombia, Peru, India, Philippines and Syria.

A total of 6,513 accessions including 159 varieties from Kenya will be shipped under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for food and agriculture. Nigeria is currently leading with 4,200 samples that are due for shipment to Norway . India is second by 2,276 samples.

According to Dr Frison, storage of these seedlings will help replenish gene banks if they are destroyed during conflicts and natural disasters.

“Gene banks are not seed museums but the repositories of vital living resources that are used in the battle against major threats to food production,” he adds.

Describing the collections as ‘crown jewels’, Dr. Cary Fowler, Executive Director of Global Crop Diversity Trust, says were it not for such banks, many traditional landraces of crops such as rice, cassava, wheat, maize and beans would have been lost.

The materials mainly go to researchers and plant breeders seeking genetic traits to create new crop varieties that offer such benefits as higher yields, improving nutritional value, are resistance to pests and diseases and are able withstand harsh climatic conditions.

The CGIAR collections are currently helping plant breeders in the search for traits that could help in combating destructive crop diseases and pests such as grain borer beetle, which is destroying maize crops in Kenya.

The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) acting Director General Dr. Geoff Hawtin says shipments going to Svalbard from CGIAR gene banks are vital measure for further safeguarding the world’s crop collection.

“With the coming climatic changes, higher food prices and expanding markets for biofuels, our best available options for progress, if not survival, will be in what we have conserved and studied against all thinkable predictions”, he adds.

Under this arrangement the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) will ship 150,000 unique wheat seed collections and 24,000 samples of maize along with wild relatives and of improved varieties.

Most of the seed collections by CIMMYT are held in trust that is under long term storage for the benefit of humanity and free from any intellectual property restrictions. Anybody can access them for the good of mankind.

The International Centre for Potato’s Deputy Director General for Research Dr. Charlie Crisman reveals that the centre’s genebank is due to be awarded an ISO 17025 accreditation later this year hence becoming the first genebank in the world to apply this demanding technical quality standard in its work.

He adds that the centre will send a further 11,000 different samples in the next 4 years to the Svalbard.

On its part, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has set aside 70,000 sub samples of rice to be shipped to Svalbard. Further sub samples of the remaining 40,000 accessions are expected to deposit later this year.

IRRI holds 108,925 accessions, the world’s largest most diverse collection of rice conserved in genebanks around the world.

An AWC Feature