In 2021, the international community celebrates the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables. The Secretariat of the International Treaty, in collaboration with the Global Crop Diversity Trust, is convening an international panel of high-level experts to highlight the importance of the genetic diversity of fruits and vegetables for food and nutrition security.The international panel will:

•discuss how genetic resources of fruit and vegetable are currently conserved, shared and used by international genebanks, national programmes, researchers and breeders, the seed sector and non-governmental organizations;

•Showcase examples of development and production of fruit and vegetable varieties suited to diverse agro-systems and farming practices;

•Discuss current challenges associated with the conservation and use of fruit and vegetable genetic resources, and identify future needs and actions.

Themes of the panel:

•Status of fruit and vegetable genetic resources: a global overview

•Experiences and challenges in the conservation, sharing and use of genetic resources of:

-horticultural crops, and

-fruit trees.

Speakers: The group of high-level experts will comprise representatives of FAO and other international organizations involved in food and agriculture, governments, private sector and civil society.The full programme of the event will soon be published on-line. Questions from the audience to the panelists will be welcome.

Other panels: The Secretariat of the International Treaty and the Global Crop Diversity Trust have joined forces to organize a series of international online panels to bring together key actors of the conservation and use of plant genetic resources. The first international panel in September 2020 reflected on the impacts of the COVID-pandemic on plant genetic resources programmes (please click here: http://www.fao.org/plant-treaty/overview/partnerships/expert-panel for the full recording). A third panel will take place in the second quarter of 2021 on cryo-conservation, a method with a significant potential to ensure the long-term, sustainable conservation of fruit trees and other important food crops.