01/12/2008

Germany, Namibia, the Netherlands and Zambia have recently notified the Secretary of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) of national collections with more than 120.000 accessions of important staple crops that are included in the Multilateral System of Access and Benefit -sharing.

The notifications refer to collections with a large number of accessions of rice, beans, sorghum, cowpea, sweet potato, apples, finger millet and cassava, mainly.

The Secretary of the International Treaty, Mr Shakeel Bhatti, noted that “these notifications facilitate transparency and help other Contracting Parties to know the status and the importance of the collections within the Multilateral System”.

By ratifying the Treaty, Contracting Parties agree to establish the Multilateral System, a pool of food crops that are important for agriculture and food security, to facilitate access to those resources and to share, in a fair and equitable way, the benefits arising from their utilization.

Regarding the coverage of the Multilateral System, the Treaty specifies that Contracting Parties shall include all plant genetic resources for food and agriculture listed in Annex I of the Treaty that are under their management and control and in the public domain. This annex contains a list of 64 crops and forages that together account for 80 per cent of the food we derive from plants.

National collections

“At its Second Session the Governing Body of the Treaty requested me to continue the exercise of gathering information, in close collaboration with the national focal points, about the inclusion and the assessment of plant genetic resources in the Multilateral System”, said Mr Bhatti, and “the notifications facilitate this task”.

The Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection of Germany has notified the Secretary of the Treaty that more than 100,000 accessions that are held in the collections of the Genebank of the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), and the Fragaria and Malus collections held by the Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants have been included in the Multilateral System. The German material is fully described by the German National Inventory for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (PGRDEU) and available on the Internet.

The National Botanic Research Institute of Namibia has notified 1,772 accessions, including a collection of 1,441 accessions of pearl millet, which are included in the System.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality of the Netherlands has notified the Secretary of four collections maintained by four different centers: the collections of the Centre for Genetic Resources of the Wageningen University Research Centre, the solan aceae collection held by the Radboud University consisting of non-tuber bearing wild species, and the apple collections of the Pomologische Vereniging Noord-Holland, and the Stichting Fruithof Frederiksoord, which contain traditional Dutch apples.

The Agricultural Research Institute of Zambia has informed the Secretary of twelve collections with a total number of 4,340 accessions which are included in the Treaty System. The Zambia National Plant Genetic Resources Centre has used agronomic and morphological characterization techniques to add value to some of the main collections and has characterized 1,886 accessions of sorghum, cowpea, finger millet, maize, beans and pearl millet.

Additional Resources

• National Inventory for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture in Germany, 
• National Botanical Research Institute of Namibia, 
• Centre for Genetic Resources, the Netherlands,
• Zambia Agriculture Research Institute.