from the global partnership for plant conservation

Convention on Biological DiversityPlant Conservation Report Page 28TARGET 9:SEVENTY PER CENT OF THE GENETIC DIVERSITY OFCROPS AND OTHER MAJOR SOCIO-ECONOMICALLYVALUABLE PLANT SPECIES CONSERVED, AND ASSOCIATEDINDIGENOUS AND LOCAL KNOWLEDGE MAINTAINED.IntroductionPlant genetic resources of crops and othermajor socio-economically valuable plantspecies are the biological base for foodsecurity and, directly or indirectly, supportthe livelihoods of every person on Earth. Thistarget recognizes the central role that withinspeciesgenetic diversity plays in improvingproduction of crops and other useful species.Socio-economically valuable plant species, whichare not crops include important forage, agroforestryand forestry species, as well as importantornamentals, medicinal plants and crop wildrelatives. Such plant genetic resources, and theassociated indigenous knowledge, are amongthe most important, and often the only, assetsavailable in many poor, rural communities andtheir signiicance increases as other resourcesdwindle or disappear.ProgressThe Global Crop Diversity Trust has beenestablished to ensure the conservation andavailability of crop diversity for food securityworldwide. The Trust is assembling anendowment fund, the income from which will beused to support the conservation of distinct andimportant crop diversity in perpetuity, throughexisting institutions. The Trust has also playeda key role in the planning of the Svalbard GlobalSeed Vault, which has been constructed in Norway,close to the Arctic Circle, to provide the ultimatesafety net against accidental loss of diversity intraditional gene banks. While approximately 1.5million distinct seed samples of agricultural cropsare thought to exist, the facility has a capacity toconserve 4.5 million. The irst seeds arrived inJanuary 2008.A variety of medicinal products from plants(Photo: Peter Wyse Jackson).It has been demonstrated that 70% of the geneticdiversity of a crop can be contained in a relativelysmall sample (generally, less than one thousandaccessions). Indeed, for some 200 to 300 crops, itis expected that 70% of genetic diversity is alreadyconserved ex situ in gene banks. Genetic diversity isalso conserved through on farm management andby working with local communities. Maintenanceof local and indigenous knowledge associatedwith useful medicinal plants, crop wild relativesand other useful wild plant species presents itsown distinct challenges, especially given the largenumber of species to be considered.Ex situ conservation collection of kiwi germplasm inWuhan Botanical Gardens, China (Photo: BGCI).Regarding forest tree genetic resources, apartfrom a few tree species of major socio-economicvalue, there is little reliable information on thegenetic diversity of tropical tree species (80%of the total number of tree species). The geneticdiversity of wild, highly variable, undomesticatedforest trees is conserved on site. Assessing thegenetic diversity of these species is challenging,especially since there is rarely quantitative dataon population size or decline upon which to basea characterization of their genetic diversity.