Global Conference on Green Development of Seed Industries

Virtual Event, 04/11/2021 - 05/11/2021

The Global Conference on Green Development of Seed Industries is organized by FAO as a means to provide a neutral forum for its members, partners, industry and opinion leaders, and other stakeholders to engage in focused dialogues on how best to make quality seeds of preferred productive, nutritious and resilient crop varieties available to farmers. The event will generate evidence for actions towards the realization of the goals of FAO’s Strategic Framework 2022-31: for the transformation to more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems for better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, thus contributing to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDGs 2 and 1.

Objectives of the conference

Increase awareness of the contributions of the seed industry to green innovation of plant production.
Promote cooperation between sectors, especially for public-private partnerships.
Foster priority setting and the targeted mobilization and pooling of scientific, technical and financial resources for strengthened seed systems.
Debate evidence and share updated knowledge about green development of the seed industries.

Themes

Advanced technologies. The conference will review the advances in modern plant breeding technologies, emerging biotechnologies and informatics technologies and how they can be used safely and efficiently to enhance the delivery of genetic gains to farmers. Importantly, the conference will also facilitate a stocktaking of the available tools.

Conservation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. The conference will be a forum for reviewing the state of knowledge of crop diversity, its conservation and availability, and its underpinning role in resilient and sustainable agri-food systems. It will further explore how the use of crop diversity may be positively influenced through a wide range of actions taking place in situ, on-farm or ex situ as part of an interdependent global system.

Crop varietal development and adoption. The conference offers a unique opportunity to review select case studies to identify the drivers of success. Particular attention will be paid to the validated means for the deployment of scientific progress in nurturing environments that permit mutually beneficial partnerships amongst the multiplicity of actors.

Seed systems. The conference will explore what has worked in transforming ineffective systems into responsive and dynamic ones that provide the solutions farmers need so that successes may be replicated. The roles of international seed trade and the requisite harmonization of legal frameworks will be explored, especially in the context of the solutions that work for the production systems of small-scale farmers.

Policy and governance. The conference will be an opportunity to explore the enabling environment – at national, regional and global levels – for seed systems and the associated upstream domains of germplasm conservation and plant breeding.