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 Agricultural
Genetic Resources
Conservation Especially over the past several decades, substantial resources and effort have been invested worldwide in assembling and storing, ex situ, agricultural crop genetic resources. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), for example, conserves nearly 700,000 crop accessions in 11 genebanks located throughout the world. Assembling this impressive collection is one thing, conserving the material for the benefit of future generations is an entirely other thing, requiring financial resources to maintain and operate the genebank facilities plus the considerable labor and scientific expertise required to conserve the material held in them. Precisely how much does it costs to conserve a crop accession for a year or in perpetuity; are there significant costs differences among different size genebanks, among genebanks operating at different locations, among different crops, and among different conservation techniques? Moreover, are there alternative financing options (e.g., annual donations vs endowment or trust funds) to meet these long-term costs? These and other questions were confronted in a coordinated series of genebank costing studies launched with support from the CGIAR's Systemwide Crop Genetic Resources Program, undertaken through research at the International Food Policy Research Institute in collaboration with InSTePP. The research generated a range of publications and provided the empirical and intellectual foundation for the establishment of a Global Crop Diversity Trust (www.startwithaseed.org), an international organization founded to establish a $260 million endowment that will provide a permanent source of funding for crop diversity collections around the world. By early 2006, pledge exceed $60 million, including $12.2 from Australia, $10.3 million from Switzerland, $8.2 million from Canada, $7.2 million fro Sweden, $6.2 million from Norway, and $5.5 million from the United States Core Collaborating Individuals and Institutions
Crop Varieties—Their Development, International Flows and Economic Consequences Contemporary changes in the crop sciences and the intellectual property regimes surrounding that science are prompting probing questions about the future roles of publicly funded and conducted crop-improvement research in the United States and elsewhere in the world. Questions also continue to be raised about U.S. contributions to international R&D and international agreements concerning crop genetic resources. The first phase of this research is undertaking a detailed economic assessment of the extent and value of varietal change in the U.S. rice and wheat crops since 1970, and, most importantly, the myriad and changing sources of the germplasm that underpin this varietal change. Special emphasis is being given to identifying the pattern and economic significance of cross-state and international germplasm flows to aid policy choices about the deployment of state and federal funding for public crop-improvement research and the U.S. position regarding international germplasm access and benefit sharing agreements. A second, parallel phase of the research is analyzing the international flows and economic impacts of rice and wheat varieties among all the world's major producers of these two crops, tracking in detail the sources of these economic impacts. Core Collaborating Individuals and Institutions
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