18/11/2012

The event was opened by Ms Kakoli Ghosh, Officer of Plant Production and Protection Division of FAO (AGP).

The first presentation was made by Dr Shakeel Bhatti, Secretary of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) who illustrated the recent progress made on the implementation of this international law instrument regulating conservation and sustainable use of our food crops and in particular, the outcomes of the intersessional committee on the Standard Material Transfer Agreement and the Multilateral System and those of the committee on sustainable use of plant genetic resources.

This video and photo set were created during a side event organized on the occasion of the 6th Meeting of the Intergovernmental Working Group on Plant Genetic Resources of FAO on 15 November 2012.

The second presentation was delivered by Mr Frank Rijsberman, CEO of the Consortium of the CGIAR on recent major highlights of the reform of the CGIAR system and the challenges ahead in this reform process. Mr Stefan Weiss, Deputy Director General for Research at Bioversity International also addressed the participants during the side event.

The presentations were followed by a round of questions and answers moderated by Mr Chikelu Mba. Questions were made by participants from the United Kingdom, Poland, Hungary and Jamaica.