Funding to preserve plant diversity could protect the 300 different types of potato found in Peru.An international treaty aimed at protecting and improving access to the world's plant genetic resources has obtained more than US$10 million from donors to fund its second round of research grants for helping to conserve global food security. The funding was confirmed at a meeting of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture this week in Bali, Indonesia. The treaty is best known for its role in paving the way for construction of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. "No country has within its borders the crop diversity required to meet future food needs. With climate change altering growing conditions and populations rapidly increasing, sharing crop diversity is no longer optional," says Shakeel Bhatti, secretary of the treaty's governing body. The new funding, which includes nearly US$1.2 million from Canada, and $4 million pledged by the United Nations Development Programme, adds to the nearly $5 million already secured from five nations, including Spain and Norway.The grant winners, from a pool of 136 proposals, will be announced in May, says Francisco López, a press officer for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. More than $500,000 was awarded to 11 projects in the first funding round in May 2009. Winning projects included a scheme to develop strategies for growing potatoes in the Peruvian Andes in the increased temperatures resulting from climate change. Free access Under the treaty, which has been signed by 127 nations, signatories are legally bound to pass on genetic information about the world's 64 most important food crops, including potatoes and wheat. The information, which can be held in gene banks or on farms, is freely available to researchers, plant breeders and farmers. The treaty had struggled to get funds together, and Bhatti had feared that some projects would not be funded (See Boost for conservation of plant gene assets). But this week's announcement means that the treaty is on track to meet its target of securing $116 million by 2014. José Esquinas Alcázar, a geneticist who works on hunger and poverty issues at the University of Cordoba in Spain, says that conserving global plant genetic diversity is the only way to develop crops that are adapted to changing climates and resistant to new diseases. He warns that more than 75% of the world's crop diversity was lost during the twentieth century as a result of modern farming methods that focus on only a handful of crops, such as wheat and rice. And he calls for more research on "orphan crops", such as quinoa (Chenopodium), a grain-like crop originating in South America. "No one is taking care of them. We need to invest in research in crops that feed the poor," he says.

Link: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110318/full/news.2011.171.html

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