FAO has just published "The role of biotechnology in exploring and protecting agricultural genetic resources", edited by J. Ruane and A. Sonnino. This 187-page book brings together papers from an international workshop held on 5-7 March 2005 in Turin, Italy, on the role of biotechnology for the characterization and conservation of crop, forest, animal and fishery genetic resources as well as the background and summary documents from an e-mail conference on the same subject that was held three months afterwards. The book contains four chapters on the status of the world`s livestock, fishery, crop and forest genetic resources respectively (Section I); two chapters on the use of cryopreservation and reproductive technologies for conservation of genetic resources (Section II); eight chapters dedicated to the use of molecular markers for characterization and conservation of genetic resources (Section III); and two chapters from the e-mail conference (Section IV). See http://www.fao.org/tempref/docrep/fao/009/a0399e/a0399e00.pdf or contact [email protected] to request a copy.

15/06/2006