Global pool to provide cheap, cost-free genes

The availability of genes needed for breeding tailor-made varieties of food and other agricultural crops will now become easy and cost-free for plant breeders and seed producers, including private seed companies, throughout the world.

This follows the establishment of a global plant gene pool under the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture that was signed in 2004 and has since been ratified by 115 countries, including India.

The gene pool and the system of gene sharing, which has become operational, is functioning under the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations.

The global treaty legally binds all the signatory countries to share the plant genetic resources preserved in their gene banks with everybody, including the private sector plant breeders, free of cost.

However, the benefits, including the profits, from the commercial use of the products derived from these genes will have to be shared equitably and fairly with the country to which the genetic material belongs.

Significantly, it also provides for benefit sharing with the farmers who have nurtured the plant genetic resources (the sources of desired genes) over the centuries.

Such an arrangement for sharing of plant genetic resources assumes great significance at a time when the important genes and their sources are increasingly being patented by the multinational seed companies. Besides, the agricultural biodiversity, which is the basis for food production and crop improvement, is eroding fast due to the effects of modernisation, changes in diets and increasing population density.

The FAO estimates that about three-quarters of the genetic diversity found in agricultural crops have already been lost over the last century.

Further decline is continuing. Today, just 12 crops are meeting 80 per cent of the global population's dietary energy from plants; with just four crops "� rice wheat, maize and potato "� together accounting for almost 60 per cent. On the whole, only about 150 crops are being used as sources of human food.

The new multilateral gene pool will, to begin with, provide free-of-charge access to the plant genetic material of 64 major crops. The pool will comprise of over a million samples of genetic material of these crops.

The global agricultural research institutes funded by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) together hold more than 6,00,000 samples of plant genetic resources. These will be accessible to everybody under the new system.

India's National Gene Bank in Delhi, operated under the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), has over 1,60,000 accessions of agricultural and horticultural crops.

This gene bank ranks 4th in the world and is amongst the most modern ones. It has a total capacity to hold about one million genetic resource material samples.

"No country is sufficient in crop diversity. Only the sharing of plant genetic material from different regions and countries will enable us to explore the unknown characteristics and the future potential of plant genetic resources," said an official of the global treaty on plant genetic resources.