Saving Seeds: The Economics of Conserving Crop Genetic ...

The conservation of genetic resources is vital to the maintenance of biodiversity and to the world's ability to feed its growing population. There are now more than a thousand genebanks worldwide involved in the ex situ (meaning away from the source) storage of particular classes of crops. Since the 1970s, the eleven genebanks maintained by the centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have become pivotal to the global conservation effort. However, key policy and management issues-usually with economic dimensions-have largely been overlooked.brThis provided the impetus for a series of detailed economic studies, led by IFPRI, in collaboration with five CGIAR centers: CIAT (based in Columbia), CIMMYT (Mexico), ICARDA (Syria), ICRISAT (India) and IRRI (Philippines). This book reports these studies and discusses their wider implications.