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The price of conserving agricultural biodiversity

Nature Biotechnology volume 21, pages 126–128 (2003)Cite this article

The danger of excessive reliance by farmers and breeders on a narrowing genetic base was dramatized by the infestation of US hybrid corn with cytoplasm male sterility with southern corn leaf blight in the early 1970s (refs. 1, 2). This event catalyzed a worldwide effort to expand substantially the amount of agricultural biodiversity conserved ex situ in genebanks for use in crop breeding. Since then, modern biotechnologies that provide new and less costly ways of screening crop samples for useful traits have increased the usefulness of genebanks to breeders. The recent surge in interest in searching for valuable traits in conserved genetic resources has generated concerns about the sustainability of such conservation as a result of the mismatch between the generally short-term nature of the financial support for crop conservation and the long-term nature and intent of the effort. To sustain the long-term conservation and use of agricultural germplasm held in ex situ genebanks, a first step is to establish the cost of the necessary financial endowment. This article presents an estimate of this cost for the 11 genebanks now maintained by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR; Washington, DC) at their international crop-breeding centers.

CGIAR genebanks have become a pivotal part of the global agricultural genetic conservation effort. In 2001, they held about 666,000 germplasm accessions (plant or seed samples) of crops, forages, and agroforestry trees (see Table 1). As depositories of germplasm for the world's major food crops (especially those important to people in developing countries) and for many other regionally important staple crops, CGIAR genebanks are our natural starting point for a global conservation initiative.

Table 1 CGIAR germplasm holdings and distributions in 2001
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Figure 1: The cost of conservation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of the CGIAR's System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP), in-kind contributions from various CGIAR Centers, and additional support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and International Food Policy Research Institute. We are grateful to Bent Skovmand, Suketoshi Taba, Jan Valkoun, Mike Jackson, Kameswara Rao, Paula Bramel, and Daniel Debouck for their help in conducting these studies, and Samy Gaiji, Tony Simons, Jean Hanson, Willy Roca, Robert Guei, Quat Ng, Suzanne Sharrock, Jane Toll, and Geoffrey Hawtin for providing additional data and comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 2033 K Street NW, Washington, 20006, DC

    Bonwoo Koo

  2. professor at the Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, 1994 Buford Avenue, St. Paul, 55108, MN

    Philip Pardey

  3. professor at the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 207 Giannini Hall, Berkeley, 94720, CA

    Brian Wright

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  1. Bonwoo Koo
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Koo, B., Pardey, P. & Wright, B. The price of conserving agricultural biodiversity. Nat Biotechnol 21, 126–128 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0203-126

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