The CGIAR system holds the largest international collection of genetic resources in the world, making up approximately 40% of the unique samples of the world’s major food crops.

Eleven of the 16 Future Harvest Centres have ex-situ collections of in-trust materials. Between them they hold more than half a million samples of crops, forages and agroforestry species.

This material has been gathered in the course of about 2000 collecting missions in 150 countries and as a received through exchanges with other collections. About three-quarters of the samples are traditional varieties and landraces and wild and weedy relatives. This material contains huge reserves of diversity, which makes it particularly valuable for future crop improvement.

Background to access
Most of the world’s genebanks were founded in a climate of free exchange of material. The 1983 International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources upheld this ideal, stating that germplasm was a “common heritage of mankind” and should be freely available to all without restriction.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), signed in Rio in 1992, recognized national sovereignty over the genetic resources found within a country’s borders. The CBD encourages countries to give others access to genetic resources, with prior consent on agreed terms for sharing any benefits that may accrue. Access as envisaged by the CBD could be structured along bilateral or multilateral lines. The Future Harvest Centres believe strongly that—for the species they are concerned with—multi-lateral agreements are preferable.

Resolution Three of the Nairobi Final Act of the Conference for the Adoption of the Agreed Text of the Convention on Biological Diversity reinforces this interpetation. It recognized that ex-situ material collected before 1993 constituted a subset of genetic resources that merited special consideration. The agreements between Centres and FAO to clarify the status of this ex-situ material explicitly state that they should be interpeted as being in harmony with the CBD and the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources.

Agreements with FAO
The interim agreements (pending revision of the International Undertaking) were signed on 26 October 1994, and essentially guarantee that materials remain freely available. The Centres claim no intellectual property rights over the material they hold in trust, and no-one who uses that material can restrict access to it. The agreements assure governments that the Centres will maintain the designated collections in trust.

Materials acquired after the CBD came into force are subject to the terms agreed between the Centre and the supplier of the resources. The Centres have striven to obtain such material on the same terms as samples already held in their genebanks.

How much
The Centres send out about 150,000 samples each year from the in-trust collections, mostly to research establishments in developing countries. National genebanks that have lost their collections through war or natural disasters have been able to call on the in-trust collections, even re-introducing material back into the farming communities to help re-establish their agricultural base. In-trust collections also function to insure against other forms of loss. In recent years about 45 countries have asked for samples of germplasm that they originally provided to the Future Harvest genebanks.

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