Intellectual Property Rights and the Politics of Food - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 381

Nicolay Vavilov identified major centers of crop diversity and collected thousands of
samples for genetic study. His efforts helped in mapping the geographical origins of
crops and their diversity.
While germplasm pools were created, they were often ad hoc efforts and for short-
term purposes. In the post-World War II period, exchange of plant genetic resources
received a boost with advances in genetics and the realization of the need for a sys-
tematic global approach for exchanging and storing materials. In 1948 the Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) set up a global clearinghouse to advance the shar-
ing, and the cataloging, of resources to facilitate their use in breeding programs. FAO
delivered samples often through plant introduction stations that were based mostly in
Europe, Australia, the Soviet Union, and the United States.
The advent of the Green Revolution and the development of plant breeding programs
in many parts of the world resulted in more demand for accessing the genetic diversity
among the stored plant genetic resources. At the same time, concerns grew about ero-
sion and loss of genetic diversity because of the spread of modern varieties (Fowler and
Mooney 1990). FAO convened the first technical conference on plant genetic resources
in 1967, with collective conservation emerging as an important theme. At the same
time, many centers for agricultural research in different parts of the work were contrib-
uting to, and working for, the Green Revolution with support from governments, the
World Bank, and private foundations (see Harriss and Stewart, this volume). In 1971 the
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) was established;
many of the research centers were brought under CGIAR, which operated officially
outside the UN system. CGIAR gave more importance to ex situ conservation, that is,
storing samples under controlled conditions, than to in situ conservation, that is, con-
servation through their use on the farm as practiced by farmers and farming communi-
ties historically. The centers under CGIAR were dedicated to a single crop or to a limited
number of crops and had access to germplasm collections held at universities. They
have engaged in exchanging collections and, thus, over the years they have succeeded
in building up a huge, diversified collection of germplasm of crops that are important
for global food security. The varieties they developed were based on this collection and
from germplasm received from elsewhere.
The establishment of the International Board on Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR)
marked a step forward in global efforts to collect, classify, exchange, and conserve
plant genetic resources. By the early 1980s, a global pool of plant genetic resources
housed in different centers and repositories had emerged. The exchange and use of
materials available under this pool was based on the Common Heritage of Mankind
(CHM) approach. This approach was grounded in the notion that plant genetic
resources constitute a commons that should be accessible to all with very few or no
restrictions on collection, exchange, use, and classification. Plant genetic resources
were considered a global resource not subject to restrictions under national sover-
eignty. This enabled CGIAR centers and the FAO to freely collect, exchange, store, and
share materials with many stakeholders, including plant breeders, researchers, and
private-sector breeders.