The 9th Session of the Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITWG-AnGR) took place at FAO headquarters in Rome on 6-8 July 2016. One of the session working documents, entitled “Review of implementation of the Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources”, provides a 6-page overview of recent FAO activities, including the finalization, publication and distribution of “The second report on the state of the world’s animal genetic resources for food and agriculture”. This 562-page Report, edited by B.D. Scherf and D. Pilling and launched by FAO in January 2016, provides a comprehensive assessment of livestock biodiversity and its management. The core of information used in preparing the Report came from 129 governments that submitted country reports. It includes several sections relevant to biotechnology, such as those on the state of capacities regarding the use of reproductive and molecular biotechnologies and the state of the art regarding the use of molecular tools for exploring genetic diversity. See background information and documents from the 9th ITWG-AnGR website, at http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/programmes/en/genetics/angrvent.html (in English, French and Spanish), and the FAO press release for the January 2016 launch of the Report, at
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/380661/icode/ (in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Italian, Russian and Spanish). Contact [email protected] for more information.