Gene banking is becoming an increasingly important tool for management of animal genetic resources. Therefore, in 2021 FAO developed a practical guide on Innovations in conservation of animal genetic resources.

The guidelines were prepared by an international team of scientists and gene bank managers, many of whom were partners in the EU Horizon 2020 project IMAGE (Innovative Management of Animal Genetic Resources).

The draft guidelines were presented to the 11^th session of the Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the 18^th session of the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.  The Commission requested FAO to organize workshops to raise awareness and support regional and subregional networks in capacity building for implementation of the guidelines.

To this end, FAO has been holding a series of webinars on cryoconservation of animal genetic resources. The webinar schedule, with links to live or recorded webinars, are available below.

The webinar series is being organized with the cooperation of the Nordic Genetic Resources Center, who is hosting the webinars on their Microsoft Teams platform.

Links to the live webinars (future dates) and recordings (past dates) are included in the table.