The Genetic Resources Policy Committee and the Science Council of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) jointly organized a workshop entitled Technical issues associated with the development of CGIAR policies to address the possibility of adventitious presence of transgenes in CGIAR ex situ collections on 30 August - 1 September 2004 at the headquarters of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), Italy. The general objective of the workshop was to provide technical inputs to initiate a process to develop a system-wide policy (or policies) concerning how to respond to the probability of unintentional introgression of transgenes into the ex situ collections held by the international agricultural research centres of the CGIAR. Based on technical information from the workshop, the Genetic Resources Policy Committee drew up "Draft guidelines for the development of Future Harvest centres` policies to address the possibility of unintentional presence of trangenes in ex situ collections". See the workshop presentations, the workshop report and the draft guidelines at http://www.ipgri.cgiar.org/Policy/GMOWorkshop/ or contact [email protected] for more information.

02/11/2004