Eleven Countries to Receive Rewards for Conserving Crops

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture announced that it will give 500,000 USD of fund support to 11 developing countries that conserve food seeds and other genetic material from major crops. The announcement was made at the meeting of the Treaty's governing body in Tunis earlier this week. Grants are to be awarded to projects in Egypt, Kenya, Costa Rica, India, Peru, Senegal, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Cuba, Tanzania and Morocco. The Treaty, established in 2004, aimed at protecting and improving access to the world's plant genetic resources.

According to a news release by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the grants were made possible by the generous donations of Norway, Italy, Spain and Switzerland in support of agriculture and food security. The projects were chosen from hundreds of applications and include: conservation of agro-biodiversity in millet, maize and sorghum in Senegal, genetic enhancement and revitalization of finger millet in Kenya, management of potato varieties in rural communities on the Capachica Peninsula in Peru and on-farm protection of citrus diversity in Egypt.

The FAO media release is available at http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/20242/icode/ Read the article published by Nature at http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090601/full/news.2009.532.html for more information. For the complete list of projects, visit http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/20241/icode/