Crop Trust

Last updated
The Crop Trust
Founded2004;19 years ago (2004)
Type Non-profit NGO
Focus agricultural biodiversity, conservation, food security, genebanks
Headquarters Bonn, Germany
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
 Stefan Schmitz (Executive Director), Catherine Bertini (Chair of the Executive Board)
Website croptrust.org

The Crop Trust, officially known as the Global Crop Diversity Trust, is an international nonprofit organization with a secretariat in Bonn, Germany. Its mission is to conserve and make available the world's crop diversity for food security. [1]

Contents

Established in 2004, the Crop Trust is the only organization whose sole mission is to safeguard the world’s crop diversity for future food security. [2] Through an endowment fund for crop diversity, the Crop Trust provides financial support for key international and national genebanks that hold collections of diversity for food crops available under the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). [3] The organization also provides tools and support for the efficient management of genebanks, facilitates coordination between conserving institutions, and organizes final backup of crop seeds in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Since its establishment, the Crop Trust has raised more than USD 300 million for the Crop Diversity Endowment Fund and supports conservation work in over 80 countries. [4]

Mission

Crop diversity is the biological foundation of agriculture, and is the raw material plant breeders and farmers use to adapt crop varieties to pests and diseases. In the future, this crop diversity will play a central role in helping agriculture adjust to climate change and adapt to water and energy constraints.

History

The Crop Trust provides financial support for key international and national genebanks that hold collections of diversity for food crops such as this genebank at ICRISAT in India. ICRISAT active genebank.jpg
The Crop Trust provides financial support for key international and national genebanks that hold collections of diversity for food crops such as this genebank at ICRISAT in India.

In 1996, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recognized the need for global coordination for the conservation of the world’s crop diversity. At a conference organized by the FAO, 150 countries launched a Global Plan of Action to coordinate efforts at halting the loss of the world’s agrobiodiversity. [5] The Global Plan of Action formed a major pillar of what would become the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, known as the Plant Treaty. The Plant Treaty brings the diversity of 64 food and forage crops into a multilateral system where the genetic material is protected and accessible to all who needed it. To protect the collections that housed that genetic material, however, a stable system of funding was needed.

To partly address this need, the Crop Trust was established in October 2004. [6] Its mission was to help build a global system of ex situ crop diversity conservation, funded through an endowment for crop diversity. The Plant Treaty recognizes the endowment fund as an essential element of its funding strategy and confirms the autonomy of the Crop Trust as a scientific organization in raising and disbursing funds. Geoff Hawtin was appointed the Interim Executive Director of the new organization, housed at the FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy. [7]

The Crop Trust began its work gathering contributions for the endowment fund from various foundations, corporations, and governments that had ratified the Plant Treaty. In 2007, the Crop Trust signed its first long-term grant agreement with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, Philippines. [8]

In 2005, Cary Fowler was appointed the first permanent Crop Trust Executive Director. [9] Under Fowler’s leadership, the Crop Trust initiated the Global System Project and joined the three-party management agreement for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which opened in 2008 as a partnership between the Crop Trust, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of Norway, and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen). In 2011, the Crop Trust launched the Crop Wild Relatives Project, a 10-year project to collect and conserve crop wild relatives, a project funded by the Government of Norway. [10]

In 2012, the Crop Trust appointed Marie Haga as the new Crop Trust Executive Director. [11] A new target for the Crop Trust endowment fund was set at USD850 million to finance a global system for the conservation of crop diversity, centered around key international, regional and national collections, as well as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. [12]

In 2013, the Crop Trust opened its new headquarters in Bonn, Germany, through a hosting agreement with the Government of Germany. Shortly thereafter, the Crop Trust launched the five-year CGIAR Genebank CRP, taking on financial responsibility and oversight for the 11 CGIAR genebanks. [13] In 2017, the CGIAR Genebank Platform replaced the Genebank CRP program and the Food Forever Initiative was launched to raise awareness of efforts to achieve Target 2.5 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

In 2018, the Crop Trust signed the first long-term funding agreement with the IRRI genebank, pledging to fully fund essential operations in perpetuity. [14] The Crop Trust celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2019 and crossed the USD 300 million threshold in the endowment fund.

In 2020, Stefan Schmitz was appointed Executive Director. [15] With support from the German government, the Crop Trust launched the Seeds4Resilience Project project in 2020. [16] The project will upgrade five national genebanks in sub-Saharan Africa. [17] In February 2020, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault reached one million accessions of seed samples for more than 6,000 species. [18]

Management

The Crop Trust is headquartered in Bonn, Germany, after relocating there from Rome, Italy.

The executive board is chaired by Catherine Bertini. The Crop Trust's Donors' Council is chaired by Dr. Taek-Ryoun Kwon of South Korea.

Main donors include: Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Grains Research and Development Corporation (Australia). A number of developing countries have also provided support, including Egypt, Ethiopia and India. Further contributions have been received from private corporations, foundations, industry associations, and from private individuals. [19]

Leadership

Executive Director

2004-2005 – Geoff Hawtin (Interim)

2005-2012 – Cary Fowler

2013-2019 – Marie Haga

2020–present – Stefan Schmitz

Executive Board Chair

2007–2012 – Margaret Catley-Carlson

2013–2017 – Walter Fust

2018–2019 – Amb. Timothy Fischer

2019–2021 – Sir Peter Crane

2022–present – Catherine Bertini

Grants

Since its establishment, the Crop Trust has funded work in over 80 countries, and made its first grant for long-term conservation of a collection in late 2006. [20] By 2011, the Crop Trust had established in-perpetuity support (i.e. grants funded through the Crop Trust's endowment) for collections of 15 crops: rice, cassava, wheat, barley, faba bean, pearl millet, maize, forages, banana, aroids, grass pea, sorghum, yam and lentil.

In 2007, the Crop Trust began a global initiative to rescue threatened, high-priority collections of crop diversity in developing countries and to support information systems to improve their conservation and availability. [21] These efforts included providing support to developing countries and international agricultural research centers to deposit shipments of seed samples in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault for safety duplication purposes.

In 2010, the Crop Trust launched a global 10-year program to find, gather, catalog and save the wild relatives of 22 major food crops. [22] These wild species contain untapped diversity to help address future challenges to agriculture.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault

The Crop Trust provides most of the annual operating costs for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault Svalbard Global Seed Vault Exterior 2020.jpg
The Crop Trust provides most of the annual operating costs for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault

The Crop Trust joined the Government of Norway and the Nordic Gene Bank in the 2008 establishment of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a "fail-safe" facility located at Svalbard, Norway. [23] The Seed Vault provides long-term storage of duplicates of seeds conserved in genebanks around the world. This provides security of the world’s food supply against the loss of seeds in genebanks due to mismanagement, accident, equipment failures, funding cuts, and natural disasters. [24] It is designed to hold the seeds of some 4.5 million samples of different varieties of agricultural crops. [25] Primarily through the endowment fund, the Crop Trust provides most of the annual operating costs for the facility. With support from donors, the Crop Trust also assists selected genebanks in packaging and shipping seeds to the Seed Vault. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seed bank</span> Backup seed storage

A seed bank stores seeds to preserve genetic diversity; hence it is a type of gene bank. There are many reasons to store seeds. One is to preserve the genes that plant breeders need to increase yield, disease resistance, drought tolerance, nutritional quality, taste, etc. of crops. Another is to forestall loss of genetic diversity in rare or imperiled plant species in an effort to conserve biodiversity ex situ. Many plants that were used centuries ago by humans are used less frequently now; seed banks offer a way to preserve that historical and cultural value. Collections of seeds stored at constant low temperature and low moisture are guarded against loss of genetic resources that are otherwise maintained in situ or in field collections. These alternative "living" collections can be damaged by natural disasters, outbreaks of disease, or war. Seed banks are considered seed libraries, containing valuable information about evolved strategies to combat plant stress, and can be used to create genetically modified versions of existing seeds. The work of seed banks often span decades and even centuries. Most seed banks are publicly funded and seeds are usually available for research that benefits the public.

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, is a comprehensive international agreement in harmony with the Convention on Biological Diversity, which aims at guaranteeing food security through the conservation, exchange and sustainable use of the world's plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA), the fair and equitable benefit sharing arising from its use, as well as the recognition of farmers' rights. It was signed in 2001 in Madrid, and entered into force on 29 June 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center</span> International plant breeding organization

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center is a non-profit research-for-development organization that develops improved varieties of wheat and maize with the aim of contributing to food security, and innovates agricultural practices to help boost production, prevent crop disease and improve smallholder farmers' livelihoods. CIMMYT is one of the 15 CGIAR centers. CIMMYT is known for hosting the world's largest maize and wheat genebank at its headquarters in Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CGIAR</span> Food security research organisation

CGIAR is a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in research about food security. CGIAR research aims to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve human health and nutrition, and sustainable management of natural resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agricultural biodiversity</span> Agricultural concept

Agricultural biodiversity or agrobiodiversity is a subset of general biodiversity pertaining to agriculture. It can be defined as "the variety and variability of animals, plants and micro-organisms at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels that sustain the ecosystem structures, functions and processes in and around production systems, and that provide food and non-food agricultural products.” It is managed by farmers, pastoralists, fishers and forest dwellers, agrobiodiversity provides stability, adaptability and resilience and constitutes a key element of the livelihood strategies of rural communities throughout the world. Agrobiodiversity is central to sustainable food systems and sustainable diets. The use of agricultural biodiversity can contribute to food security, nutrition security, and livelihood security, and it is critical for climate adaptation and climate mitigation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Svalbard Global Seed Vault</span> Globally accessible seed bank on Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure backup facility for the world's crop diversity on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The Seed Vault provides long-term storage of duplicates of seeds conserved in genebanks around the world. This provides security of the world's food supply against the loss of seeds in genebanks due to mismanagement, accident, equipment failures, funding cuts, war, sabotage, disease and natural disasters. The Seed Vault is managed under terms spelled out in a tripartite agreement among the Norwegian government, the Crop Trust, and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gene bank</span> Facility that preserves genetic material

Gene banks are a type of biorepository that preserves genetic material. For plants, this is done by in vitro storage, freezing cuttings from the plant, or stocking the seeds. For animals, this is done by the freezing of sperm and eggs in zoological freezers until further need. With corals, fragments are taken and stored in water tanks under controlled conditions. Genetic material in a 'gene bank' is preserved in a variety of ways, such as freezing at -196 °C in liquid nitrogen, being placed in artificial ecosystems, or put in controlled nutrient media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cary Fowler</span>

Morgan Carrington "Cary" Fowler Jr. is an American agriculturalist and the former executive director of the Crop Trust, currently serving as U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bioversity International</span>

Bioversity International is a global research-for-development organization that delivers scientific evidence, management practices and policy options to use and safeguard agricultural biodiversity to attain global food- and nutrition security, working with partners in low-income countries in different regions where agricultural biodiversity can contribute to improved nutrition, resilience, productivity and climate change adaptation.

Crop diversity or crop biodiversity is the variety and variability of crops, plants used in agriculture, including their genetic and phenotypic characteristics. It is a subset of and a specific element of agricultural biodiversity. Over the past 50 years, there has been a major decline in two components of crop diversity; genetic diversity within each crop and the number of species commonly grown.

Forest genetic resources or foresttree genetic resources are genetic resources of forest shrub and tree species. Forest genetic resources are essential for forest-depending communities who rely for a substantial part of their livelihoods on timber and non-timber forest products for food security, domestic use and income generation. These resources are also the basis for large-scale wood production in planted forests to satisfy the worldwide need for timber and paper. Genetic resources of several important timber, fruit and other non-timber tree species are conserved ex situ in genebanks or maintained in field collections. Nevertheless, in situ conservation in forests and on farms is in the case of most tree species the most important measure to protect their genetic resources.

The World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg), previously known as the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC), is an international, nonprofit institute for vegetable research and development. It was founded in 1971 in Shanhua, southern Taiwan, by the Asian Development Bank, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United States and South Vietnam.

The U.S. National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) is a network of institutions and agencies led by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the effort to conserve and facilitate the use of the genetic diversity of agriculturally important plants and their wild relatives.

Sally Norton is an Australian plant scientist and national Leader of the Australian Grains Genebank, Agriculture Victoria, in Horsham. Norton has over 20 years' experience in the collection, characterisation and management of plant genetic resources in seedbanks, specialising in crop wild relatives. She is working to establish the Australian Grains Genebank as the national focal point for access to grains germplasm for use in Australia's research and grain crop breeding programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agriculture in Svalbard</span> Svalbards agriculture

Agriculture in Svalbard – the archipelago containing the world's northernmost permanently inhabited settlements – has a short history, and remains a minor economic factor, but has nonetheless had a culturally and socially significant role, as well as an ecologic impact. Svalbard is home to the Global Seed Vault, which serves to protect the world's biological and agricultural diversity. Polar Permaculture Solutions, AS was formed in January 2015. Polar Permaculture has been focused on producing locally grown food in town, and also with composting food waste.

John Trevor Williams was a British plant geneticist who was instrumental in the creation of plant gene banks.

The Seed Savers' Network (SSN) is an Australian not-for-profit organisation, based in Byron Bay, New South Wales. Since 1986, SSN has organised gardeners and farmers to collect, multiply and redistribute garden seeds in Australia and also within peasant organisations worldwide.

The Nordic Genetic Resource Center is a plant, farm animal and forest conservation, gene resource guardian, and sustainable use organization under and primarily financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers, and is headquartered in Alnarp, near Malmö, in southern Sweden. NordGen's primary mission is "securing the broad diversity of genetic resources linked to food and agriculture" through "conservation and sustainable use, solid documentation and information work and international agreements".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Center for Biosaline Agriculture</span>

International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) is an international, not-for-profit applied agricultural research center with a unique focus on marginal environments. It identifies, tests and introduces resource-efficient, climate-smart crops and technologies that are best suited to different regions affected by salinity, water scarcity and drought. Through its work, ICBA aims to improve food security, nutrition and livelihoods of resource-poor farming communities around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plant genetic resources</span>

Plant genetic resources describe the variability within plants that comes from human and natural selection over millennia. Their intrinsic value mainly concerns agricultural crops.

References

  1. ↑ "Crop Trust to conserve plant diversity". www.fao.org. Archived from the original on 2019-08-12. Retrieved 2021-06-30.
  2. ↑ "The Global Crop Diversity Trust". Food Planet Prize. Retrieved 2021-06-23.
  3. ↑ "Agreement for the Establishment of the Global Crop Diversity Trust" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2012-11-17.
  4. ↑ "The Crop Trust Raises $300m of $850m Target to Safeguard Global Biodiversity - AgFunderNews". AgFunderNews. 2016-05-17. Retrieved 2017-02-26.
  5. ↑ "Plant Production and Protection Division: Background on the First GPA". www.fao.org. Retrieved 2021-07-04.
  6. 1 2 Frison C, López F, Esquinas-Alcazar J (2011). "Plant genetic resources and food security: Stakeholder perspectives on the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture".{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. ↑ Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (5–7 November 2003). "Progress report on the Global Crop Diversity Trust" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-07-09.
  8. ↑ "Protecting Rice: The Planet's Most Important Food Source". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2021-07-04.
  9. ↑ "SeedQuest - Central information website for the global seed industry". www.seedquest.com. Retrieved 2021-07-04.
  10. ↑ Dempewolf H, Eastwood RJ, Guarino L, Khoury CK, Müller JV, Toll J (2014-04-21). "Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: A Global Initiative to Collect, Conserve, and Use Crop Wild Relatives". Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. 38 (4): 369–377. doi: 10.1080/21683565.2013.870629 . ISSN   2168-3565.
  11. ↑ "Åslaug Haga –new Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity". Norway Exports. 2012-10-19. Retrieved 2021-07-04.
  12. ↑ Shannon K (2016-01-01). "The Crop Trust Calls for Conservation of Genetic Crop Diversity". Food Tank. Retrieved 2021-07-04.
  13. ↑ Halewood M, Jamora N, Noriega IL, Anglin NL, Wenzl P, Payne T, et al. (October 2020). "Germplasm Acquisition and Distribution by CGIAR Genebanks". Plants. 9 (10): 1296. doi: 10.3390/plants9101296 . PMC   7601315 . PMID   33019539.
  14. ↑ "The World's Rice Bowl: Protected in Perpetuity". International Rice Research Institute. 2019-01-16. Retrieved 2021-07-04.
  15. ↑ "Crop Trust Appoints Dr. Stefan Schmitz As New Executive Director |…". Seed Today. 2021-07-04. Retrieved 2021-07-04.
  16. ↑ "Farmers And Scientists Are Conserving Crop Genetic Diversity". Food Tank. 2021-10-11. Retrieved 2022-08-07.
  17. ↑ "Crop Trust signs landmark agreement with Kenya's national genebank". www.seedquest.com. Archived from the original on 2021-07-09. Retrieved 2021-07-04.
  18. ↑ Carrington D (2020-02-25). "Newly waterproofed Arctic seed vault hits 1m samples". the Guardian. Retrieved 2021-07-04.
  19. ↑ "Donors and Funding Status - Crop Trust". www.croptrust.org. Retrieved 2023-03-02.
  20. ↑ SciDev.Net. "'Indefinite funding' safeguards biodiversity of rice". SciDev.Net. Retrieved 2017-02-26.
  21. ↑ Revkin AC (2007-04-19). "Global Effort to Save Endangered Crops Gets $37.5 Million Infusion". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2017-02-26.
  22. ↑ Gill V (10 December 2010). "BBC - Earth News - Wild food crop relatives to be 'rescued'". news.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-02-26.
  23. ↑ "Best Inventions of 2008 - #6. The Global Seed Vault". Time. 2008-10-29. ISSN   0040-781X . Retrieved 2017-03-09.
  24. ↑ Walsh B (2009-02-27). "The Planet's Ultimate Backup Plan: Svalbard". Time. ISSN   0040-781X . Retrieved 2017-03-09.
  25. ↑ "'Doomsday' seeds arrive in Norway". news.bbc.co.uk. 31 January 2008. Retrieved 2017-03-09.
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