Role of Gene Banks in Maintaining Crop Genetic Resources

Abstract

Crop genetic resources are foundations of human civilisations and are indispensable for continued existence of human race. They not only help to satiate hunger but also provide livelihood and cultural identities to humans inhabiting a specific habitat. They have shaped the cultural identities of the people as well as supported the subsistence and livelihood. They are the basic raw material for evolving new plant varieties and are a reservoir of genetic diversity. However, genetic resources are being lost at an increasingly alarming rate. The intensification of farming systems, change in food habits as well as emerging new breeding technologies such as genetic engineering have accelerated the pace of erosion. With the erosion of these resources, mankind loses the potential to adapt to new socio-economic and environmental conditions. Currently only 150 plant species are under extensive global cultivation, with 12 crop species providing 80% of the world’s food. Given the landscape of modern agriculture in terms of its enhanced market and demand orientation, the observed changes are inevitable, notwithstanding the fact that this decline of crop diversity at both the inter- and intra-species has definite negative implications for the productivity, stability and resilience of the global farming system. Therefore, crop breeders have been collecting, maintaining and distributing crop diversity in ex situ system in fairly modern facilities called gene banks in an apparent move to prevent any catastrophic situation in the future. Currently there are about 1750 gene banks in the world maintaining millions of accessions of crops and their wild relatives. Nearly 7.4 million accessions (about 2 million of which are estimated to be unique) are now conserved ex situ in over 1750 facilities worldwide. The 16 centres of CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) alone account for 30-60% of the unique accessions of the world’s unique holdings. The gene banks are vital to national and international efforts to conserve and harness benefits of global crop diversity and make invaluable contributions to regional and global germplasm exchange. There are obviously distinct advantages to the crop improvement and research community as a whole in also establishing large, megadiverse, international ex situ collections, as they are maintained in fairly advanced facilities, under specialised staff, with continuous refinement of biodiversity management protocols as well as follow an efficient system for material distribution worldwide to different types of users in a safe manner.