Source: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI)

The countries of the world set themselves some formidable challenges when they adopted the Millennium Development Goals: to reduce acute poverty and hunger by half, to improve the health of mothers and children, to ensure environmental sustainability -- among others -- and all by the year 2015. Many of the MDGs depend crucially on agriculture. And agriculture depends crucially on the use of genetic resources, the variation between individuals that is the basis of their different performance under different circumstances.

Some kinds of rice, for example, can grow in 5 metres or more of water. Others make do with just a few centimetres. The differences between them are in their genes, and farmers and breeders can make use of those genes to improve their crops and select the characteristics they want. That is how breeders at the African Rice Centre approached the problem of feeding parts of Africa, by bringing together the genetic resources of several different rice varieties from two different species to create the so-called Nerica (New Rice for Africa) varieties.

Nerica varieties represent a tremendous step forward. They yield 1.5 to 2 tonnes per hectare, compared to 1 tonne or less for traditional varieties. They also mature more quickly, so that farmers can grow a second crop such as beans, which are nutritious and return fertility to the soil. And Nerica varieties are themselves more nutritious, with 10-12% protein as opposed to the 8-10% of traditional varieties. Nerica varieties alone are not going to solve Africa’s problems, but without them the countries that depend on rice have absolutely no hope of meeting the Millennium Development Goals.


The creation of Nerica rice – and countless other examples of more productive crop varieties – could not have happened without the exchange of plant genetic resources. Nerica’s two main parents come from Africa and Asia, and in their own ancestry they can count varieties from hundreds, if not thousands, of different locations. Every country’s food supply and crop improvement efforts depends to a greater or lesser extent – usually greater – on material from elsewhere. Spain’s “traditional” rice, beans, tomatoes and garlic, for example, come originally from Asia, South America and the Caucasus.

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) is the first global instrument designed to facilitate the exchange of plant genetic resources and is thus a vital underpinning of improved varieties. Exchange is itself a major benefit of the Treaty, but the Treaty also establishes a system for access and benefit sharing that under certain circumstances will allow rural communities in developing countries to profit from commercialized varieties that make use of plant genetic resources.

Breeding more productive varieties is probably the most significant way in which the exchange of plant genetic resources that is facilitated by the International Treaty will make a difference to meeting the MDGs. Such varieties are crucial to meeting the pressing need for adequate calories and protein. An estimated 842 million people around the world still suffer from a chronic shortage of food. But there are also an estimated 2 billion people – mainly women and young children – who suffer the hidden hunger of missing micronutrients, such as iron and vitamin A. The International Treaty can help them too. Researchers will be able to use the information system envisaged by the Treaty to find varieties that deliver better nutrition, and then to use those resources to create new varieties of staple crops that may not have higher overall yields but that nevertheless deliver more of the vital micronutrients.

In the Pacific, for example, there are orange-fleshed Fe’i bananas, just one of which delivers more than the adult daily requirement of vitamin A. In other parts of the world, such as East Africa, bananas are a staple crop and vitamin A deficiency is common. If the two types of banana could be combined it could go a long way to meeting East Africa’s need for vitamin A.

Better nutrition is also delivered by a more diverse diet, and the Treaty will help here too, by enabling farmers and researchers to access a wide variety of crops and varieties that could be brought into farming systems. More diverse farming systems are more resilient and better survive disturbances such as drought. They also make fewer demands on the environment. And the products of more diverse farms, translated into more diverse diets, deliver better nutrition and health.

These are just some of the ways in which genetic resources can help people to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The crucial point is that no one country has all the genetic resources it needs to improve its agriculture. The International Treaty, by facilitating the exchange of plant genetic resources, makes possible a more productive agriculture. In itself, that is not enough to meet the MDGs. But without it, there is absolutely no hope.