Crop improvement in the CGIAR as a global success story of open access and international collaboration

Abstract

Abstract:International agricultural research has historically been an example par excellence of an open source approach to biological research. Beginning in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, a looming global food crisis led to the development of a group of international agricultural research centers with a specific mandate to foster international exchange and crop improvement relevant to many countries. This formalization of a global biological commons in genetic resources was implemented through an elaborate system of international nurseries with a breeding hub, free sharing of germplasm, collaboration in information collection, the development of human resources, and an international collaborative network. This paper traces the history of the international wheat program with particular attention to how this truly open source system operated in practice and the impacts that it had on world poverty and hunger. The paper also highlights the challenges of maintaining and evolving such a system over the long term, both in terms of financing, as well the changing 'rules of the game' resulting from international agreements on intellectual property rights and biodiversity. Yet the open source approach is just as relevant today, as witnessed by the recent global food crisis and looming crop diseases problem of global significance.

Agricultural Biodiversity Is Essential for a Sustainable Improvement in Food and Nutrition Security

“…Farms specialize in livestock or crops, reducing the number of species; fields are enlarged, reducing the extent of field margins and hedgerows; soil amendments enhance the uniformity of soils; and monocultures of genetically uniform individuals tend to dominate. Within this framework, agricultural biodiversity is often seen simply as something to conserve as a source of traits that can be used to improve breeds and varieties (see, for example, [1][2][3][4][5][6] for this approach in several different realms). While this is certainly true, we argue that agricultural biodiversity as such is an important asset that delivers substantial benefits in many different realms and that there is increasing evidence that diversity per se needs to be a central element of sustainable agricultural development.…”

Role of Sustainable Wheat Production to Ensure Food Security in the CWANA region

“…The International Wheat Improvement Network (IWIN) and currently the WHEAT CRP, an alliance of international Centers (CIMMYT and ICARDA), NARS, universities and regional institutions has been a successful and efficient network for making distributing globally new wheat genotypes (Payne, 2004;Dixon et al, 2009;Byerlee & Dubin, 2010). Such a network could be strengthened by widening partnerships and collaboration, in order to develop, disseminate, and market more productive, stress tolerant, and nutritive wheat cultivars, and to perfect and promote production practices based on the principles of conservation agriculture, which boost yields while conserving or enhancing critical resources like soil and water.…”

What kind of goods are plant genetic resources for food and agriculture? Towards the identification and development of a new global commons

“…Eventually, the number of available samples would be reduced to the point where one person's use of those samples could deprive availability of the underlying accession to be used by others. It is a testimony to the fact that the ex situ collections have existed for so long -with relatively solid funding and impressive record of international distributions (Fowler et al 2001;Byerlee and Dubin 2010;SGRP 2011) -that this way of considering PGRFA's potential rivalry does not 'leap to the fore' more readily. The argument in favour of PGRFA's potential rivalrousness is further strengthened when one considers that some (possibly much -we don't actually know) of the materials maintained in the international and national genebanks no longer exist 'in the field'.…”

“…Crop improvement and PGRFA conservation efforts have generally coalesced into a modular organizational architecture (Byerlee and Dubin 2010;Dedeurwaerdere 2013), which facilitates contributions being made by a wide range of actors, with various levels of connection, distributed broadly over time and space. While some of the nodes in these modulated architectures have developed truly global roles, capacities, and commitments -for example, the CGIAR genebanks and their ability and commitment to provide PGRFA to any requestor, anywhere in the world -the shape and function of most of the modulated, informal, interactions in crop improvement and conservation continue to be influenced by extraneous variables, such as farmers' family connections and geographic proximity, scientists' interpersonal or interorganizational relationships, professional organizations, reciprocity in treatment and mutual gain, reputational benefits, intergovernmental political tensions and strategies and so on.…”