01/08/2014

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan has notified the International Treaty about the inclusion of almost 18000 accessions of crop and forages into the Treaty’s Multilateral System of Access and Benefit-Sharing (MLS) and the publication of its associated data, adding value to that material for breeders and researches. These 18000 samples, maintained in Japan by the Genebank of the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences (NIAS), belong to the list of crops and forages included in Annex 1 of the International Treaty for inclusion in the MLS.

“This notification is significant and demonstrates Japan’s contribution to the implementation of the International Treaty and to plant breeding globally,” said Shakeel Bhatti, Secretary of the International Treaty. “It is not just about the quantity of the accessions, but also about the type of material included; in this case, the amount and quality of the associated information provided together with the online ordering options brings an important added value,” he added.

Japan became a Contracting Party to the Treaty on 28 October 2013 and following the commitments under Article 11 of the International Treaty regarding the coverage of the Multilateral System, the Government has notified The Treaty Secretariat about the inclusion of 17,948 accessions of more than 20 crops and forages listed in the Annex 1, including rice, wheat, barley, sorghum, maize and a large number grasses and forages. The National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences has also set up a dedicated website where users can get detailed data on the composition of the collections and on the facilitated procedures to order the material.

The website is available.

The material in the Multilateral system can also be ordered online and the Institute has published a table indicating the standard quantity of seeds to be dispatched within each order per accession and plant species (e.g. 10 seeds per rice, 50 per wheat, 3 for potato, 50 for sorghum).

Not only material, also associated data

The website is very intuitive and allows users to search material by crop, ID, cultivar name, scientific name, origin, status, and other criteria, which can be combined.

A comprehensive list of the material included can also be obtained in excel format. 

Since 30 July 2014, NIAS also provides data for 281 rice accessions in several formats, which allow the use of geo-referenced associated data to be downloaded and easily displayed on a map or reused for further analyses. The notification from Japan can be found online together with the previous notifications received by the Secretary at the Treaty website.