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Subject: [permaculture] The Ultimate Crop Insurance - A new treaty strives to save 10, 000 years of plant breeding : Science News Online, Sept. 11, 2004
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 15:59:01 -0700
From Science News, Vol. 166, No. 11, Sept. 11, 2004, p. 170.
Week of Sept. 11, 2004; Vol. 166, No. 11 , p. 170
The Ultimate Crop Insurance
A new treaty strives to save 10,000 years of plant breeding
Janet Raloff
In late summer 2002, looters threatened war-engulfed Afghanistan's agricultural heritage. Unknown pillagers dumped stocks of carefully
labeled seeds as they ransacked buildings in Ghazni and Jalalabad, where the material had been hidden for safekeeping. All the looters
wanted, apparently, were the plastic and glass jars in which the seeds were stored. The scattered seeds weren't the starter for next year's
crops but the genetic backup for the agrarian nation's agriculture. The catalogued seeds of various strains of wheat, barley, chickpeas,
lentils, almonds, pomegranates, and melons would have been deployed to create new seed supplies if drought, insects, or some other disaster
had wiped out the region's production of crop seeds. They also represented the raw material for creating future lines of crops.
Botanists had recorded where each seed type had come from and information about the climate and geography of its place of origin. However,
seeds for cold-tolerant wheat didn't look any different from those for a cold-sensitive but disease-tolerant plant. Removed from their
labeled jars, these and all the other seeds lost their archival value.
"It's like having a library of books with no titles on them," notes Geoffrey Hawtin, the former director general of the International Plant
Genetic Resources Institute in Rome.
a5306_1736.jpg
BAGGED. A technician checks crop seeds in bags and boxes at a gene bank in
Cali, Colombia.
Intl. Center for Tropical Ag./CGIAR
Seed repositories, such as those in Afghanistan, sometimes called gene banks, are often casualties of war, says Ruth Raymond of that
institute. "Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia, Iraq—we know of at least 50 or 60 examples of where it's happened," she says. Bank holdings often
offer looters the makings for dinner or free seed for a small crop. In most cases, these events haven't turned into long-term disasters
because gene banks in other countries house backup stores. That's true for Afghanistan and the other war-struck countries. When hostilities
subside, a country can begin rebuilding its gene bank with seeds from half a world away.
Offering such relief to an embattled country is just one of the missions of gene banks, which together form an informal international
system. The banks also preserve the genes that have helped plant species thrive in harsh climates, survive diseases, or provide particular
flavors or other appealing traits.
Crop diversity constitutes agriculture's "global wealth—the set of genes that have been developed by farmers over 10,000 years," explains
Clive Stannard of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.
Unfortunately, the successes of large agribusiness companies are adding to the need for a strong seed-repository system and worldwide crop
diversity.
A small number of popular, high-yielding crop varieties bred by these companies have increasingly edged out landraces, the varieties adapted
to localized conditions during millennia of farming. If not archived in a secure, internationally sanctioned gene-banking system, these
ancient varieties could disappear, taking with them as-yet-undiscovered genes for important traits.
A decade ago, a United Nations treaty on species conservation had the unintended effect of erecting roadblocks to gene banking and breeding.
But on June 29, a new International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture went into effect. Supporters hope it will
break down those obstacles and bolster the gene-banking system, and help preserve the genetic heritage of crops.
To the rescue
In December 1993, the Convention on Biological Diversity entered into force, signed and ratified by most nations. The convention
dramatically changed how governments, corporations, farmers, and even tribal chiefs in countries such as Brazil viewed the agricultural and
wild plants growing around them.
Gone were the days when bioprospectors from industrial nations could drop into a jungle, pluck any intriguing plant and ship it home for
analysis, and then extract a substance for use as a high-value, patentable drug. With the new treaty, companies would have to work with
locals and share profits (SN: 5/29/04, p. 344: Available to subscribers at http://sciencenews.org/articles/20040529/bob8.asp).
The treaty established the principle that a nation holds sovereign rights to the genetic resources of any plant within its borders (SN:
6/20/92, p. 407). But agricultural policymakers quickly recognized that this seemingly straightforward attempt to protect countries from
exploitation was at odds with both the nature of agriculture and the conservation of cultivated resources.
It's not easy to determine who deserves sovereignty over plant genes. Throughout history, people have been trading edible plants, so most
farmed crops have murky national origins.
In the wake of the 1993 biodiversity treaty, many nations expressed a new reluctance to continue sharing banked seeds freely, lest they
forfeit their legal rights to a plant's genetic resources.
Suketoshi Taba encountered this change in attitude when he tried to head off an apparent crisis affecting seed corn in gene banks throughout
Latin America. Taba heads maize genetic resources at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, which is known worldwide by its
acronym in Spanish, CIMMYT. It's located near Mexico City.
Budgets for maintaining gene banks had been compromised by a regional economic downturn in the early 1990s. Many seeds were not being
sufficiently dried before storage, and refrigeration units in the storage facilities often lost power or broke down. The proportion of
banked maize seeds able to germinate at any given time should exceed 85 percent, he says, but had fallen well below 50 percent.
To rescue seeds from banks in Cuba and 12 other Latin American nations, Taba offered to have the imperiled seed stores replanted locally and
the next-generation seeds shared between the various nations' banks and CIMMYT. The countries initially balked, arguing that these seed
stocks, though imperiled, were their property. In the end, botanists prevailed over politicians, and Taba saved 10,000 sets of seeds at a
cost of only slightly more than $1 million.
The 1993 treaty, which essentially nationalized genetic resources, created other potential obstacles to improving crop seeds. It encouraged
countries to require a seed company or laboratory to work out an international contract every time it imported seed. The cost of legal
review, DNA analysis of each batch and supervision by treaty-enforcement officials would be staggering. "You would just close down plant
breeding as a science," Raymond says.
On the menu
By the mid-1990s, a groundswell developed among nations for a remedy to the Convention on Biological Diversity. In late 2001, after 7 years
of debate, negotiators from about 120 countries finally settled on the outline of the new crop biodiversity treaty.
The new treaty promotes the collection and banking of seeds, the sharing of seeds among countries that pledge to honor the treaty, and an
international survey of genetic resources currently existing in gene banks and farmers' fields around the globe (SN: 7/17/04, p. 45:
Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040717/note10.asp). The treaty also promises to improve crops for farmers,
especially those living in harsh environments.
a5306_228.jpg
DIVERSE VIEWS. Seed fairs, such as this one in Kenya, award prizes to farmers bringing in the most crop varieties—some show up with as many
as 50 different types. Such competitions encourage genetic diversity and crops that continue to evolve with local conditions.
Mulvany/ITDG
During their wrangling, negotiators imposed limits on what plants would be covered by the new treaty. Just 35 food crops and 29 plants for
livestock forage made the list. Although reasons for a type of plant not making the new treaty's list vary, politics often proved a major
factor, says Patrick Mulvany of ITDG, an international sustainable-development foundation in Rugby, England.
If a company breeds a new plant variety from foreign seeds of one of the 64 plants included, the treaty permits that company to
commercialize the crop. However, a share of any profit must be contributed to a treaty fund for programs in developing countries to promote
sustainable farming or conservation of genetic diversity in crops.
When the treaty qualified to go into force earlier this year, 40 nations had ratified it. Since then, 15 more nations have joined the group,
and more are poised to do so.
The United States remains a major holdout among industrial nations. It was among the negotiators of the latest treaty, but the Senate hasn't
taken up the treaty. A leading reservation, U.S. officials say, is concern over preserving commercial rights to a share of the profit for
seeds passed between countries. Still to be worked out are the size of those royalties, whether they should be paid when seed is first
imported or when a crop is marketed, how long a seed developer must pay royalties, and whether royalties should vary by crop.
Still, says Peter Bretting of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Md., "the U.S. government is certainly conceptually
supportive of the treaty."
The Convention on Biodiversity continues to govern the commercial exploitation of plants not listed under the new treaty. These include some
important food crops, such as soybeans, peanuts, onions, and grapes. In these cases, countries negotiate individual commercial agreements
without any contribution to an international program.
Bankers' blues
The new treaty's biggest current initiative is creating the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which will be an autonomous agency that coordinates
the 1,500-or-so gene banks scattered throughout more than 100 nations. Among the largest are the 11 international facilities affiliated with
the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Together, they store some 600,000 genetically distinct seed samples.
All CGIAR members will "sign agreements with the treaty, by which they will put their entire collections under its policy guidance,"
Stannard says, The United States has its own system of more than 20 gene banks. They hold some 450,000 samples of roughly 10,000 plant
species. Seeds maintained in these facilities at temperatures above freezing might require replanting every 5 to 10 years to stay viable.
The nation's biggest gene bank, located in Fort Collins, Colo., holds duplicates of seeds kept in all the other U.S. facilities and stores
most of them at –18°C to –55°C. At these temperatures, metabolic processes slow and the aging of seeds is delayed, so seeds stay viable for
50 to 100 years, explains Bretting.
Unfortunately, Raymond notes, most of the world's seed repositories aren't as well maintained or financed as the U.S. facilities are. Seed
maintenance is "not sexy," she laments, so most governments neglect it. "How excited can you get about funding refrigeration?" she asks.
Yet, says Raymond, gene banks are an "essential insurance program to guarantee that genes will remain safe and accessible for future crop
improvement." This is becoming increasingly important, she notes, as biological diversity wanes throughout the world.
Diminishing diversity
In the 1950s, Chinese farmers grew about 10,000 varieties of wheat. Two decades later, Raymond notes, the number had fallen to 1,000. India
experienced a similar loss of rice diversity over the past 3 decades, she says. And throughout the Andes, the cradle of tomatoes,
wild-tomato species have become so imperiled that "before too long, the only real examples of tomato diversity will be in a gene bank," she
says.
Raymond cites U.N. estimates that one in 12 flowering plants—including crop
types such as wild potatoes—will go extinct within 2 decades.
Commercial plant breeding has also been winnowing plant diversity, observes
Marilyn Warburton, a molecular geneticist at CIMMYT.
Commercial growers prefer uniformity in crops for the sake of mechanized harvesting, so breeders have focused on developing high-yielding
crops that will grow the same size across a field; respond consistently to weather, climate, and nourishment; resist blights; and mature
within a tight window of time during harvest season.
Warburton has confirmed great genetic variability in landraces of wheat planted in developing countries before the agricultural movement
that came to be known as the green revolution. Her DNA analyses show that in their efforts to achieve the high yields, CIMMYT and other
green revolution breeders "reduced diversity in traits sampled throughout the genome."
Warburton notes that wheat yields have lately leveled off in many developed countries, despite intense breeding efforts to raise them. This
has fostered speculation, she says, that commercial breeders might have "run out of genetic variation."
a5306_3712.jpg
WHEAT'S WORTH. These newly synthesized lines of bread wheat have restored the
traditional crop's lost genetic diversity.
CIMMYT
Her CIMMYT colleagues, however, have developed what they call synthetic bread wheats, which demonstrate that genetic crop diversity can be
restored or even amplified. Over a 15-year period, Abdul Mujeeb-Kazi and his team crossed banked seeds that represented the original wild
parents of durum wheat and then crossed their progeny with another wild wheat. This effectively duplicated the natural events that
originally gave rise to bread wheat some 10,000 years ago.
CIMMYT scientists have since repeated the process to produce additional
synthetic bread-wheat lines.
Warburton's analyses of these lines' DNA now show that genetically, "they are about as diverse as the original landraces of wheat." However,
she notes, the new wheats give up to 50 percent higher yields than the original green revolution lines and yields similar to the best
commercial yields today. An added benefit: The new wheats are extremely resistant to environmental stresses, such as pests, drought, and
salty soils.
Plant triage
Healthy, well-stocked gene banks make such a success possible. Unfortunately, Raymond observes, those in the United States and the CGIAR
system aren't typical. Most banks are ill funded and have outmoded equipment. A few amount to little more than a stash of seeds in a
bureaucrat's refrigerator.
The Global Crop Diversity Trust is inventorying gene banks to identify those in need of rescue. Nations, foundations, and individuals are
being asked to donate funds to upgrade facilities that are in dire straits, especially banks with important collections. Once these gene
banks gain solid footing, they may qualify for annual funds from a new endowment being set up under the trust.
Raymond has been charged with spearheading a campaign to raise an additional $260 million to establish that endowment, which should
eventually permit annual disbursements to gene banks totaling some $12 million for boring budget items such as payments for electricity and
new refrigerators.
"What we're requesting is chicken feed," she says. However, she adds, even this small endowment could yield big dividends in developing
countries. "And it's for such a great cause," she argues ardently. "I mean, we're talking about the [agricultural] security of the world."
If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered for publication in Science News, send it to editors@sciencenews.org.
Please include your name and location.
International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
2004. Text and resources available at: http://www.fao.org/ag/cgrfa/itpgr.htm
Further Readings:
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2004. Biological Diversity in Food and Agriculture. How does biodiversity benefit
natural and agricultural ecosystems? Available at http://www.fao.org/biodiversity/.
Fowler, C. 2004. Accessing genetic resources: International law establishes multilateral system. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution
51(September):609-620. Abstract available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:GRES.0000024646.81612.1f.
______. 1992. Rio summit launches two 'Earth' treaties. Science News 141(June
20):407.
Sources:
Peter Bretting
USDA Agricultural Research Service
Room 4-2212, Mail Stop 5139
5601 Sunnyside Avenue
Beltsville, MD 20705-5139
Web site: http://www.nps.ars.usda.gov/
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Secretariat
The World Bank
MSN G6-601
1818 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20433
E-mail: cgiar@cgiar.org
Web site: http://www.cgiar.org/
Geoffrey Hawtin
c/o Clive Stannard
Commission on Genetic Resourcs for Food and Agriculture
Room B738
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
1-00100 Rome
Italy
Patrick Mulvaney
ITDG, Schumacher Centre
Bourton, Rugby CV23 9QZ
United Kingdom
Web site: http://www.itdg.org/.
Ruth D. Raymond
Global Crop Diversity Trust
c/o International Plant Genetic Resources Institute
Via dei Tre denari 472/a
0057 Maccarese (Fiumicino)
Rome
Italy
Web site: http://www.startwithaseed.org/
Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity
393 Saint Jacques Street, Suite 300
Montreal, QC H2Y 1N9
Canada
E-mail: secretariat@biodiv.org
Web site: http://www.biodiv.org/
Clive Stannard
Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
Room B738
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
1-00100 Rome
Italy
From Science News, Vol. 166, No. 11, Sept. 11, 2004, p. 170.
[permaculture] The Ultimate Crop Insurance - A new treaty strives to save 10, 000 years of plant breeding : Science News Online, Sept. 11, 2004,
Lawrence F. London, Jr., 09/17/2004