"We also work to ensure that both crops as well as their wild relatives – those that are under threat – either due to the fact that their environment is degrading because of human activity or because of the changing climate – that those are collected and held in one of these gene banks so they’re available in the future," she said.
The trust reports that, currently, "much of the world’s crop diversity is neither safely conserved, nor readily available to scientists or farmers." It warns that "diversity is being lost and with it the biological basis of our food supply."
Bramel said, "They’re basically held in trust for the world and they’re freely available to everyone. The only access that’s required is that you have to sign an agreement that acknowledges that they stay within the public domain. There’s an option for ensuring that if you were to develop something useful that some of that goes back in terms of benefit sharing to the farmers who developed those traits."
Crops of the past may become the crops of the future. They’re called heirlooms.
"You see this rekindling of our historical ties to varieties in the case of heirlooms. So you see heirloom vegetables. You see all kinds of heirloom crops. You see it in apples. You see it in peaches, in lots of things, where people are stepping back and saying they want to rediscover that diversity that they’ve lost," she said.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25