Agricultural Gene Banks May Go Broke

© 2002 Wendy Dager

When you think of an agricultural gene bank, you may picture a mad scientist laughing maniacally over the man-eating plant he's created.

Truth is, these "seed" banks aren't really something out of "Little Shop of Horrors." Instead, they're key to sustaining the world's crop diversity.

But there's more to them than a catalogue of seeds. Rodomiro Ortiz of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture says that agricultural gene banks are not just seed repositories, they also exist to "maximize the utilization of wild and cultivated gene pools in crop breeding...fulfilling their role in human well-being."

Yet, despite this lofty purpose, seed banks are in major trouble.

No Money in the Bank

According to professor Jeff Waage of Imperial College's department of agricultural sciences in London, many agricultural gene banks are unable to fulfill basic conservation functions due to lack of adequate funding.

Waage gave his report this past August at the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. According to its Web site, http://www.johannesburgsummit.org, the event was attended by "tens of thousands of participants, including heads of state and government, national delegates and leaders from non-governmental organizations." The focus was to direct the world's attention "toward meeting difficult challenges, including improving people's lives and conserving our natural resources in a world that is growing in population, with ever-increasing demands for food, water, shelter, sanitation, energy, health services and economic security."

Of grave concern to attendees was Waage's report, "Crop diversity at risk: the case for sustaining crop collections." The report offered the most recent statistics on agricultural gene bank performance by comparing data collected from 99 countries to similar data recorded in 1996.

What Waage and his colleagues discovered was that, although the number of plant samples held in crop diversity collections has increased by 65 percent, gene bank budgets have been cut back in 25 percent of countries and remained the same in another 35 percent.

In other words, there isn't enough green to support the green.

With about 1300 agricultural gene banks worldwide containing six million samples, proper funding is critical. The periodic planting of the conserved specimens and harvesting of fresh seeds can't occur without money, and, because of this, existing seed stock will eventually lose its viability.

A Seed Isn't Forever

"Most people assume the crop diversity that scientists have already collected from cultivated fields is safe," said Waage. "We found that this is not necessarily the case. In fact, many critical gene bank collections are in a precarious state. If these collections are allowed to fail, then we will lose the valuable crop diversity they contain forever."

Adding to this problem is that agricultural biodiversity has shrunk as farmers insist on planting only the most highly productive crops. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 10,000 plant species were once used for human food and farming, but now only about 120 species currently provide 90 percent of human food supplied by plants.

Because of this lack of crop diversity, the storehoused seeds like wild species of tomato, cassava, coffee, grape and wheat some day may be in needed, particularly by famine-susceptible countries which don't have a Starbucks or McDonald's on every street corner.

Feeding the Hungry

Seed banks also provide sanctuary for a growing number of crops that are approaching extinction due to deforestation and land development, including those that are staple food products in Africa and Asia.

Other scientists can vouch for the seriousness of this issue. Two months before Waage made his presentation in Johannesburg, Geoffrey Hawtin, Director General of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute gave a similar warning in Rome at a World Food Summit.

"This material is under threat," Hawtin said of the stored seeds. "We are extremely concerned that the diversity on which agriculture depends is being rapidly eroded."

Plant species collectors at seed banks aren't just archiving samples-they are, according to Hawtin, assisting in the fight against world hunger.

"In situations after drought, after civil unrest, after hurricanes, or whatever, where local communities can lose their own planting material, gene banks give the opportunity to reintroduce the seeds that people are used to," said Hawtin.

The funding shortage has already taken its toll. For example, a seed bank in Fiji lost 212 rice samples because it couldn't repair its ailing cooling equipment.

The only way to protect current stock and create more, Hawtin says, is to raise $260 million to maintain seed banks worldwide.

Help, however, appears to be on its way.

We Are the World

On August 30, 2002, The Global Conservation Trust announced it is working to raise the needed $260 million. The fund will provide the financial backing to expand gene banks in which seed or growing plants are stored as living libraries of genetic information.

Among the countries sponsoring the trust are Switzerland, which donated $10.2 million, Egypt, $250,000, and the United Nations, $500,000.

"When it comes to plant and genetic resources," said Geoffrey Hawtin, "the people of the world are utterly interdependent."

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