Historical Perspectives on the Role of Crop Diversity in Achieving Food and Nutrition Security

Diversity within and among domesticated species has been the cornerstone of agricultural development. Since the advent of agriculture, farmers around the world have served as custodians of this diversity, safeguarding it for future generations. Through thousands of years of cultivation, farmers have selected for plants that are adapted to local climatic conditions, which are called landraces. But the globalization of agriculture and plant breeding has led to the loss of genetic diversity in farmers’ fields, causing genetic erosion. Conservation of plant diversity in genebanks safeguards it for use by current and future generations, both directly by farmers and as the raw materials for research and plant breeding. Genebanks therefore ultimately contribute to sustainable crop production systems, and hence food and nutrition security. The most important person in the history of crop diversity conservation was Nikolai Vavilov. His work on the biogeography of crop plants provided a theoretical basis for the relationship between a crop's center of origin and the amount of genetic variation it displayed. He conducted numerous collecting trips around the world and identified main and secondary centers of diversity for numerous crops. Another important historical figure in advancing the conservation of crop diversity was Otto H. Frankel. He developed the concepts of the genetic conservation of crop plants and was central to the efforts to organize genetic conservation from the 1960s onwards. He is credited with bringing together the International Biological Programme (IBP) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the common cause of halting genetic erosion and conserving crop diversity by advocating for the establishment of a network of regional genebanks. This led to the formation of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which we now know as CGIAR, and the subsequent formation of the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources, which is now under CGIAR as the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. Hundreds of genebanks now conserve the diversity of many crops from all over the world, representing variation at the genetic level, both within and among crop populations. Conservation in genebanks means that landraces threatened with genetic erosion in farmers’ fields can be preserved and made available to users. The international genebanks of CGIAR centers conserve the global diversity of some of the major global crops, whereas national genebanks focus on the agricultural heritage of their country, which includes crops more specifically important to the country’s culture and its agricultural development. The ultimate security of seed collections is the safety back up in the permafrost at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) provides a policy framework for the world’s genebanks. The Global Crop Diversity Trust is an essential element of the funding strategy of the ITPGRFA and is raising an endowment to support the essential operations of key genebanks around the world, starting with international collections.