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Annual Report

Contents

Bioversity’s modus operandi is based firmly on working with others, leveraging our funds and abilities so that we not only achieve results, but also help to build capacity in those we work with and for. So strong and plentiful are these links, however, that to list them all in every case would make for a very long and dry document. In the following stories some of our partners have been mentioned by name while others have not, but we would like to take this opportunity to thank them all. Bioversity depends on partnership and partners to get the job done. We also acknowledge the support of all our donors, especially those that contribute unrestricted funds.

Bioversity office locations ii

Foreword 1

Bioversity International in focus 2

Official approval for an improved traditional rice variety in Nepal 7

Dealing with a deadly banana disease 10

New approaches to cacao breeding 14

Quinoa: a delicate balancing act 17

Raising a new generation of coconut trees 20

A tasty approach to dietary diversity 22

Assessing the impact of our work 24

Partnering to improve global public goods 26

Finance report 2006 29

Risk management 31

Restricted grants 2006 32

Selected publications 36

Projects 40

Establishment agreement 41

Board of Trustees 42

Professional staff 43

IPGRI and INIBAP operate under the name Bioversity InternationalSupported by the CGIAR

ii

Major Programme andRegional Of�cesOther of�ces

Turrialba, Costa Rica

Cali, Colombia

Heverlee, Belgium

Aleppo,Syria

Douala, Cameroon

Cotonou, BeninKampala, Uganda

Nairobi, Kenya

Serdang, Malaysia

Los Baños, Philippines

Beijing, China

New Delhi, India

Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Bioversity HQ, Rome, Italy Montpellier, FranceRome, Italy

Rabat, Morocco Tunis,Tunisia

Bioversityoffice locations

Agricultural biodiversity covers a vast array of topics, and Bioversity neither could nor should try to research all of them to the same extent. Instead, the organization has chosen to focus its attention on six circumscribed areas, and with the successful adoption of these Focus Areas we feel we are well on the way to becoming the kind of organization we need to be to make a greater difference in the fight against hunger and poverty.

It has been a long journey, with many twists and turns along the way. Thanks to steadfast input from staff and the valuable support of our stakeholders we now have the structures, focus and vision to renew our commitment. We should stress that Bioversity will not be abandoning its roots. Working on ex situ conservation, researching better methodologies and improving access to information will continue to be central to our work. But we will also be expanding our efforts to show how agricultural biodiversity can deliver better nutrition and health, improved livelihoods and more sustainable production systems. Commodity crops, such as banana, cacao and coffee, are another area of special concern where we will pursue a research agenda tailored to the specific needs of poor farmers.

Bioversity has also been proud to take its place on the global stage, drawing attention to the importance of agricultural biodiversity. Through our Global Partnership Programme we were asked to coordinate inputs for the first International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture in Switzerland in 2007. We played a similar role of honest broker and provider of unbiased technical information in the various meetings and consultations that led up to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and look forward to mobilizing our relevant expertise to address problems of animal and microbe diversity.

Aside from its research programme, Bioversity has also been paying attention to codifying and implementing the best practices of governance as suggested by the Secretariat of the CGIAR. In 2006 the Board formally adopted a policy on gender and diversity that ensures we will pay as much attention to workplace diversity as we do to agricultural biodiversity. And while we have long published our risk management statement, this year we add a narrative explaining changes in our financial position to provide a context for the balance sheet. These are little things, but they mean a lot, and they send a clear signal that Bioversity is focused not only on carrying out research to improve the lives of the poor but also on ensuring that our donors and stakeholders can rely on us to conduct the research they need in a clear and transparent manner.

In essence, all Bioversity’s research is directed at sustainability: the sustainability of farming systems, the sustainability of natural resources and the sustainability of human lives. We are now in an ideal position to deliver lasting solutions to many of the problems of hunger and poverty.

Emile Frison Tony Gregson Director General Board Chair

Foreword

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Diversity of plants and animals offers unparalleled opportunities not only through breeding but also by delivering a raft of far-reaching benefits. Some are direct, such as the better nutrition and greater sustainability that come with locally adapted crops. Others are more indirect, like the ecosystem services delivered by healthy populations of pollinators, biological control agents and soil microbes. Bioversity seeks not only to provide the necessary compelling evidence of the wider benefits of agricultural biodiversity for human well-being, but also to explore what types of diversity can make the greatest contribution and in what ways this can be done. However, because the field of agricultural biodiversity is so broad, the organization has chosen to focus on six well-defined areas.

DemonstratingFocus Area 1: Managing agricultural biodiversity for better nutrition, improved livelihoods and more sustainable production systems for the poor

We see: Accumulated evidence for the many benefits of agricultural biodiversity informs policies and practical activities that together improve the productivity, resilience and resistance of farming systems, thereby improving the lives of poor farmers, especially in marginal areas.

Agricultural biodiversity is always associated with a body of local knowledge about how to use and manage it. The two aspects of this asset—the diversity itself and the accompanying ability to make use of it—are being lost or used sub-optimally because they are not properly understood, valued or managed. Poor people themselves may not make best use of agricultural biodiversity, perhaps because knowledge about it has already been lost. Other sectors of society, notably decision-makers and professionals, also may be unaware of the value of agricultural biodiversity, particularly under conditions of rapid economic development and cultural change. What is needed is evidence.

Enhanced understanding of the broad benefits of agricultural biodiversity is crucial to promoting its wider use to advance the well-being of the poor. Nutrition, income and sustainability can all be improved with agricultural biodiversity; clear demonstrations of these benefits, with better management of the resources, will result in improved conservation as well as increased use. An important activity

The success of the Green Revolution enabled the world’s farmers to feed many more people, but at a cost to crop and agricultural diversity and to environmental services. Nevertheless, biological diversity remains one of the key assets that poor people can still control and use.

Bioversity International in focus

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will be to understand how systems work in one place and under one set of circumstances and then to use that knowledge to tailor solutions in other places. This will help to build a body of widely applicable approaches, rather than off-the-shelf solutions that may not succeed. There is also a need for greater efforts in public awareness and advocacy to ensure that politicians and other agents of change are aware of the ways in which agricultural biodiversity can improve the well-being of poor people.

Among the outputs of this area will be greater recognition of the nutritional and health benefits of agricultural biodiversity and the identification of options for increasing incomes, especially for the most marginalized people who need it most. These will be linked to the use of agricultural biodiversity to improve productivity, resilience and resistance in farming systems and to strengthening areas such as the informal seed sector that enable communities to make use of diversity. This is particularly important in marginal areas, where the greatest poverty occurs. As a result, agents of change at all levels, from the international to the local, will mobilize in support of the use of agricultural biodiversity. Most importantly, as farmers see the benefits of agricultural biodiversity they become self-motivated agents of change, making better use of their resources.

PromotingFocus Area 2: Conserving and promoting the use of diversity in selected commodity crops of special importance to the poor

We see: Smallholders use a wider range of commodity crops and locally processed products to meet the food security, income and health needs of their communities. Formal and informal networks link farmers, extension workers and researchers, who learn from one another and improve livelihoods further.

Certain crops play a special role among poor rural communities. Commodity crops such as banana, coconut and cacao (specific Bioversity targets) are often the mainstay of poor communities, but to date research and development on these crops has been for the benefit of consumers in industrialized countries and of industrial producers and processors in developing countries. The poor people who grow and depend on banana, coconut and cacao require a research agenda that meets their needs and that will help farmers and their families to derive maximum benefit from effective use and management of biodiversity.

A pro-poor research agenda for banana, cacao and coconut needs to address two intertwined issues: low incomes and sub-optimal use of genetic diversity. Genetic diversity is threatened by market forces that sideline traditional varieties, by epidemic diseases that attack the crops and their wild relatives and by the loss of habitat that supports wild relatives. Research needs to identify traits of value to poor people, such as the ability to withstand biotic and abiotic stresses and also to deliver

better nutrition. Conventional research is predicated on low-diversity high-input production systems that deliver a uniform, low-cost product. Bioversity will develop and promote alternative approaches using diversity to enhance productivity and sustainability. Higher incomes for smallholders and their communities will also follow from research on biodiversity to provide novel products, novel processes and novel ways to capture a greater portion of the income stream, for example by finding new ways to link traditional varieties to markets.

Breeding—as well as conserving the diversity on which breeding depends—are important activities in commodity crops. Bioversity maintains the ex situ collection of banana diversity in trust for humanity, and works with partners to secure collections of coconut and cacao. Bioversity also gathers the information breeders need to use these resources, and conducts and coordinates multi-site trials of improved material. Effort is devoted to using biodiversity to deliver ecosystem services such as healthy soil and resistance to pests and diseases, so that production is improved with lower inputs. Work will also continue to devise, develop and disseminate high-value products based on the commodity species.

A successful pro-poor research agenda for commodity crops will see smallholders use a wider range of those crops to meet their food security and health needs while conserving the resource base. Linking a range of partners, encouraging collaborative research, promoting information exchange and supporting formal networks will contribute to these outcomes and build national capacity to conduct independent research.

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ConservingFocus Area 3: Enhancing the ex situ conservation and use of diversity

We see: Genebanks effectively conserve fully representative collections of the genetic diversity of useful species, which farmers and scientists use to create varieties that help to deliver better and more resilient production systems.

Even if people are aware of the benefits that agricultural biodiversity can deliver in general, they may be unable to make use of it in specific cases, either because the diversity itself has been lost or is unavailable or because information about it is lacking. There is thus a need to ensure that properly maintained ex situ collections of diversity are both representative and well characterized and that people have the capacity to make use of the resources and information in the collections. This need assumes greater urgency in the face of the challenge to feed a population that is still increasing on land that is increasingly degraded and subject to other stresses, such as those caused by climate change. Useful and potentially useful diversity must be collected, evaluated and conserved and then made known to researchers, breeders and others who can use it to help people feed, clothe, heal and shelter themselves.

In the wake of the Green Revolution strenuous efforts were made to build collections of crop diversity and hundreds of thousands of varieties are currently conserved in genebanks. However, many of the collections were assembled hurriedly and ad hoc and as a result contain gaps and duplications

that diminish their efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Furthermore, many important species are not conserved in genebanks, either as a result of scientific neglect or because their biological characteristics do not allow them to be dried and stored at low temperatures. Another challenge is inadequate management of many genebanks. Research on conservation and additional well-targeted collecting missions will ameliorate the situation, as will disseminating best practices and training genebank staff to make use of them. Research is also needed to improve ex situ storage, in particular for species, including forest trees, with seeds that require specific storage techniques. Bioversity will work with partners to conduct this research.

Conservation, however, is not enough. If it is to yield benefits, the diversity conserved in genebanks must be reintegrated into agricultural systems. Thousands of accessions need to be screened and information about the accessions and their characteristics made available to all who can make use of them to improve sustainable agricultural production. Research will show how new molecular tools can best be used to reveal useful characteristics. Other tools will enable subsets of collections to be assembled and will assist in pre-breeding. Bioversity will also work to strengthen the links among genebanks, breeders and farmers so that each is better able to make use of the others’ resources. The end result will be more material conserved more effectively and more widely used to improve the overall performance of poor farmers’ agriculture.

ExpandingFocus Area 4: Conservation and sustainable use of forest and other wild species

We see: In situ conservation in protected areas and managed forests and ex situ conservation in genebanks and botanic gardens stem the loss of useful wild species. The widespread planting of wild species improves livelihoods.

There is a continuous spectrum between the utterly wild and the thoroughly domesticated, and while domesticated crops receive the lion’s

share of attention, people also make use of thousands of wild species for subsistence and for income. Chief among those that people use directly are forest species that supply timber and non-timber products. The wild relatives of crop species are also valuable to breeders for the many useful genes they possess. Wild species are often useful in themselves, for example as medicinal species, forages and sources of timber and living fences. Farmers may also select and then make use of diversity introduced accidentally into their crops from the wild. Bioversity has a clear interest in the diversity of wild species, which are especially important to some of the world’s most marginal groups of people living in forests and woodlands where agricultural production is uncertain.

Wild species are vulnerable in part precisely because they are wild; they usually have no property rights associated with them and so fall prey to overexploitation, environmental degradation, climate change and other impacts, human and otherwise. If the importance and value of wild species were better appreciated, that might help in their conservation, so Bioversity works with partners to analyse and document those values. One obstacle is that the thousands of important wild species differ in so many ways, for example in their biological characteristics, geographic spread, conservation status and type of use. This makes it essential to identify priorities and criteria so that insights derived from the careful study of a reasonably small number of species can be applied much more broadly.

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Wild relatives of crops need to be conserved in the wild, where they can continue to evolve the characteristics that make them such important sources of traits to improve agricultural plants. Tree species must also be conserved in the wild, because most of them cannot be conserved in ex situ collections. Bioversity works with partners to develop strategies and mechanisms to conserve populations of useful wild species and, equally important, to promote them to relevant stakeholders. Forest trees pose particular challenges, partly because reafforestation efforts commonly reduce the diversity of the cut trees they replace. Also, plantations typically replace diverse multispecies forests with monocultures. Bioversity will work with partners to address these issues, and also to domesticate some species that are threatened by overexploitation in the wild.

Through this work, Bioversity expects to integrate criteria and indicators for sustaining the diversity of species harvested in the wild and to work with other players to ensure that they place sufficient emphasis on within-species diversity. It will also contribute to the protection of important populations, especially crop wild relatives, in protected areas. As a result these species will be better conserved and used and will thus make a more effective contribution to sustainably improved livelihoods.

CollaboratingFocus Area 5: International collaboration on conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity

We see: An improved system of global conservation and use, as foreseen by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, is supported by robust and effective policies, a sound and sustainable funding framework and the necessary knowledge and evidence.

Agricultural biodiversity is essential to global food security and it cuts across national borders; no country’s agriculture is independent. Global interdependence on the diversity of species important for food and agriculture requires the entire world

community to be concerned about threats to such diversity, regardless of where they occur. Similarly, a global response is often appropriate. Cooperation at national, regional and global levels is needed to address scientific, policy and practical constraints on efficient conservation and equitable use of genetic resources. Bioversity’s role is to support such processes and to ensure that the specific requirements of agricultural biodiversity are understood and acted upon in international and regional plans and programmes.

Over roughly the past 35 years, collaborative initiatives on genetic resources have sprung up all around the world, often associated with a significant level of international participation. One such initiative is the collaboration of CGIAR-supported centres through the System-wide Genetic Resources Programme. Bioversity has hosted the SGRP Secretariat since its inception, and will build on that experience to ensure close collaboration and representation in global efforts concerned with agricultural biodiversity. One of the most important efforts will be directed to developing the Global System envisaged by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

At the moment several elements of a global system exist, among them the genebanks of the CGIAR-supported centres and information systems such as SINGER, the System-wide Information Network for Genetic Resources. Bioversity will contribute

to the development of a rational global system that can underpin the effective and efficient conservation and use of important plant genetic resources.

The negotiations of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture were successful at least partly as a result of Bioversity’s provision of unbiased and technically sound policy analysis on behalf of the CGIAR centres. Work on policy will grow in importance as Bioversity helps countries to implement the Treaty and works with a range of stakeholders to ensure that they are able to take full advantage of the Treaty’s provisions. In other areas too, Bioversity will use its policy expertise both to inform and to influence discussions. A more general aspect of policy is the need to ensure that potential participants do indeed appreciate the benefits of joining larger collaborations. Bioversity will work to facilitate processes that optimize collaboration, and will go beyond plants to become increasingly involved with international collaboration for the conservation and use of animals and microbes.

As a result, influential people around the world will be informed of the importance of the conservation and use of genetic resources and will respond with supportive policies. Mechanisms to encourage collaboration in the conservation and use of genetic resources will reinforce global political efforts, and increased awareness will prompt greater support. A more effective Global System, able to deliver the benefits of agricultural biodiversity, will result.

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MonitoringFocus Area 6: Status, trends and valuation of agricultural biodiversity

We see: Bioversity makes available information on the status and trends of within-species diversity of economically important plants and promotes strategies and actions that will sustain this diversity and, better yet, reduce its loss.

Agricultural biodiversity continues to be lost around the world, and yet the extent of the changes and their causes are not fully understood. A key problem is that while the conventional benefits of biodiversity have been measured and recognized, especially in terms of the value of ex situ conservation, the broader range of benefits are not properly valued by decision-makers or societies. Complicating the matter, much of the value is shared between private and public goods. Thus, poor farmers maintain agricultural biodiversity and derive private goods from it, but they are neither recognized nor compensated for the wider public benefits to society at large—now and in the future—that flow from their efforts. To a large extent this is because tools for capturing these values are lacking. Assessing the status of genetic diversity and monitoring erosion and other trends is also hampered by lack of tools. There are currently no tested

procedures for collecting, compiling, analysing and interpreting data on diversity over space or time for crop and forage production systems (as opposed to for specific genebank holdings or production areas).

Bioversity will work to fill the gaps, developing tools that can be applied locally, nationally and regionally. Case studies at regional and national levels will address selected target crops and wild species of socio-economic importance. Bioversity will also work with partners to ensure that they are able to use these tools to deliver the information on which sound policy decisions can be based. For banana and coconut, where it has a special mandate, the organization will play a more active role in carrying out global evaluations of status, trends and values.

Limited resources require rational decisions on what to conserve, where and how. Many international decisions

and programmes of work have stressed the need not only to understand more fully the current status of genetic diversity but also to be able to monitor genetic erosion and other trends. Vital partners in all this area’s activities will be national agricultural research systems, especially of developing countries, who will need training and tools in order to implement their obligations under the various agreements.

Bioversity expects to see countries able to report on status and trends among important crops and wild species and for this information to feed directly into various global commitments. Along with information from valuation studies, this will help policy-makers to take steps to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity. However, real progress will occur only if societies develop a greater appreciation of the services and benefits delivered by agricultural biodiversity; raising public awareness is thus another crucial activity for this area of work.

Currently, few people around the world are able to make optimal use of diversity to meet their aspirations for the future. Bioversity is focusing on providing the scientific tools and approaches needed. Ultimately farmers and others will have access to the resources they need to adapt their systems to better meet their needs.

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The Science Council of the CGIAR has established five sets of priorities to guide centre research. This table shows in dark green how each of Bioversity International’s Focus Areas links with the CGIAR’s priorities.

Priority Area 1: Sustaining biodiversity for current and future generations

Priority Area 2: Producing more and better food at lower cost through genetic improvements

Priority Area 3: Reducing rural poverty through agricultural diversification and emerging opportunities for high-value commodities and products

Priority Area 4: Promoting poverty alleviation and sustainable management of water, land and forest resources

Priority Area 5: Improving policies and facilitating institutional innovation to support sustainable reduction of poverty and hunger

Focus Area 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3a 3b 3c 3d 4a 4b 4c 4d 5a 5b 5c 5d

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In mid-2006, the Variety Approval, Registration and Release Committee (VARRC) of the National Seed Board of Nepal gave its imprimatur to a rice variety called ‘Pokhareli Jethobudho’. The importance of this decision can hardly be overstated. In the short term, it allows the variety to be sold by seed merchants, and that allows the farmers who grow it for seed to profit from their efforts. Farmers who grow it to sell for food will benefit too, because there is currently a shortfall in the market. Better supplies may reduce prices to shoppers. But because ‘Pokhareli Jethobudho’ is essentially a landrace or farmer variety (definitions are tricky and add little to the debate) this official recognition, which gives farmers in a community intellectual ownership of their variety, sets an interesting precedent for Nepal and other countries. Getting to this point, however, was not easy and required the efforts of two Bioversity projects: on in situ conservation; and on policy and law.

“The release of ‘Pokhareli Jethobudho’ is the result of a great collaborative effort involving farmers, NGOs, NARS, extension workers and the private sector, with support from Bioversity’s Genetic Resources Policy Initiative,” said Bhuwon Sthapit, a Bioversity scientist and one of the coordinators of the project.

It began, in one sense, about 100 years ago, when someone introduced a variety called ‘Jethobudho’ (literally “old man”) to the farmers around Begnas in the Pokhara valley. The farmers took to the variety for its soft texture, delightful aroma and flavour and the fact that people feel full for a long time after eating it (a result of the variety’s low glycaemic index). It

also does well in the Pokhara valley, where the season is short and rice is irrigated with cold water from the mountains. Indeed, farmers say that cold-water irrigation produces higher quality grain with better aroma. For

A farmer poses in his rice field in Pokhara valley, Nepal.

Work by the GRPI taskforce in Nepal includes the

development of case studies on landrace enhancement

and participatory plant breeding to document

impacts and best practices.

Nepal is one of the least developed countries in the world, with adult literacy less than 50%, half the children underweight or stunted, and very low incomes. And yet the combination of in situ conservation, participatory plant breeding and strong policy work has put Nepal at the forefront of developing and formally recognizing farmer varieties.

Official approval for an improved traditional rice variety in Nepal

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all these reasons, ‘Jethobudho’ fetches a premium in the market. As a result, and against a background of threatened rice diversity, ‘Jethobudho’ remained popular. It was grown by 15% of the farmers and covered almost 10% of the agricultural area in Pokhara.

It does, however, have problems. Farmers told Bioversity, working in partnership with LI-BIRD, a local NGO, and the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) that blast, a fungal disease, and the tendency to lodge, or fall over as a result of weak stems, were the two problems they most wanted to eliminate. They also wanted higher yields. Accordingly, the project began in 1998 by collecting 338 samples of ‘Jethobudho’ from farmers in the area. These were grown side by side for three years and assessed by the farmers and other team members. That whittled the number down to 46. These were assessed again for so-called post-harvest traits, most notably: did they smell, taste and feel right? Six lines were chosen as the ’authentic’ ‘Jethobudho’. (As an aside, although the six varieties are outwardly very similar, molecular profiling revealed that they are genetically distinct. When dealing with landraces and farmer varieties, a name does not necessarily uniquely identify a breeding population.)

A mixture of the six lines constitutes the new variety, ‘Pokhareli Jethobudho’. Seed producers sow a mixture of the six as their foundation stock, the harvest of which is sold to others farmers to grow for food. In addition, LI-BIRD is maintaining the six varieties separately so that it can make the mixture for the foundation seed afresh each year. As Sthapit explains, “This approach maintains the diversity within the ‘Jethobudho’ population and helps in coping with the vulnerability created by crop uniformity.” Most importantly, perhaps, the selected ‘Pokhareli Jethobudho’ meets the farmers’ expressed needs: they recorded grain yields of up to 3.35 tonnes per hectare, as against 2.4 tonnes per hectare in 1999 before the selection started.

That’s the research side of the story: farmers and scientists joining forces to improve an old landrace. Commercializing it brings in the policy experts.

Nepalese seed law is complex. The formal sector consists of two closely cooperating channels. NARC focuses on crop improvement, while the Department of Agriculture and private companies deal with the multiplication and sale of seed. In practice, Nepali farmers get roughly 90% of the seeds they sow through informal sources, but the team decided it would be appropriate to be able to disseminate ‘Pokhareli Jethobudho’ through official channels.

The project, along with the government agricultural extension office of Kaski district, set up Fewa Seed Producers Group, a community-based seed production system to supply farming communities throughout the Pokhara valley. They also named the farmers who had maintained the six chosen lines as custodian farmers. But while the Nepalese Seed Act allows anyone to apply for variety registration and release, the National Seed Board requires the applicant to have at least an MSc degree and to have a breeding infrastructure that meets a number of stringent criteria. That makes it effectively impossible for farmers to apply for registration for their varieties. The application for ‘Pokhareli Jethobudho’ was therefore submitted by the project in the name of all the stakeholders and specifically included the Fewa Seed Producers Group and the six named custodian farmers.

It was this application that the Variety Approval, Registration and Release Committee approved in June 2006, recognizing farmers as co-owners of a new variety for the first time in Nepal’s history. Step one in the recognition process requires that the variety is distinct, uniform and stable, although stability is assessed over only a single season and traditional knowledge is fully acceptable as evidence of distinctness and stability. However, step two—commercialization of the variety—has much more stringent requirements for uniformity and stability, including results from trials over three growing seasons. In this case, the VARRC adopted the view as that as one of the key agronomic aspects of ‘Pokhareli Jethobudho’ is its diversity, the uniformity criterion could be relaxed somewhat, as long as it was uniform in the important factors

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A little boy and his father pose with a bouquet of

rice in a community seed production site in Pokhara

valley, Nepal.

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of plant height, time of maturity and grain quality. Having overcome this hurdle, ‘Pokhareli Jethobudho’ can now be sold, and three seed production groups around Pokhara, including the original Fewa Seed Producers Group, are growing it.

Challenges and problems remain. The farmers will be growing a couple of tonnes of seed outside Kaski district in 2007, to see how it performs and how other markets will respond to the variety. There is also a pressing concern that better market opportunities will tempt some seed farmers to adulterate ‘Pokhareli Jethobudho’ with inferior varieties. The seed producers plan to tackle this by packing seed from individual farmers separately, with a label that gives the name of the farmer. In this way, they hope to hold each seed farmer accountable, because it will be easier for other farmers to connect quality issues to a particular source. In addition, people have raised the argument that the intense concentration on ‘Jethobudho’ will diminish rice biodiversity in the Pokhara valley. But the project points out that, if nothing else, the six selected lines will be more likely to hold their own against improved varieties from elsewhere. Furthermore, the farmers of the valley grow 70 different varieties, which they are unlikely to abandon. (An impact study on the multiple values that farmers accord their varieties has just been published in a book of impact assessments. See New light on the value of old rice, Annual Report 2002, p. 23.) ‘Jethobudho’ matures later than other traditional varieties. The farmers grow other varieties partly as insurance against an abnormally short season.

On the policy side, the detailed question of ownership remains undecided. The Seed Act does not refer to the ownership of varieties, but it does reference a set of rules that establish ownership if the breeder applies for it. Indirectly, the Seed Act touches on ownership by defining the breeder, the only person who can apply for registration, as “any person, organization or body which brings into use any variety of the crops by producing or selecting it for the first time” (emphasis added). That phrase, “for the first time”, suggests that once a variety exists, proof being that the breeder registered it, a second person

cannot apply for registration because they could not logically be the breeder. The person who first registers a variety would thus be the only person who has the right to commercialize it. This de facto ownership, say Bioversity’s policy experts, is probably the most important objective of any intellectual property protection mechanism and it seems that Nepal’s current Seed Act does indeed give the applicant effective ownership.

The case of ‘Pokhareli Jethobudho’ has aroused intense interest from farmers’ groups, NGOs, policy-makers and others, and was discussed extensively at a workshop on protection for farmers’ varieties organized by the Genetic Resources Policy Initiative in Hanoi, Viet Nam, in October 2006. The proceedings of that workshop will be published soon.

Further informationb.sthapit@cgiar.org

Farmers in Nepal’s Pokhara valley have a lot to gain

from the release of ‘Pokhara Jethobudho’, an improved

rice variety developed with the help of Bioversity

International and local NGOs.

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Banana xanthomonas wilt (BXW) is an unforgiving disease. Rather than just reducing yield, as many diseases do, it causes the fruit to ripen prematurely and rot. Eventually the plant dies. Moreover, direct challenge by injecting the disease bacteria straight into plants has so far uncovered not one resistant variety, only differences in the speed and severity of the disease.

BXW, also known as banana bacterial wilt, started making headlines in 2001, when it was seen for the first time in Uganda. Since then it has turned up in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania. In heavily affected areas of Uganda, losses of up to 80% have been observed. Among the worst affected varieties is ‘Kayinja’, a juice banana known elsewhere as ‘Pisang awak’.

Given the importance of cooking bananas as a staple food and of juice bananas as a source of income in the

Great Lakes Region of Africa, the consequences of letting BXW run rampant would be devastating.

Fortunately, the spread of the disease can be contained. Frederick Kisegerwa discovered as much in 2004 when he first noticed the symptoms on his ‘Kayinja’ plants. The Ugandan farmer had heard about various control measures on the radio and from his local agricultural extension office and he started to put them into practice. He dug up all the sick plants on his farm and chopped them into pieces, which he buried. He also started to remove the male bud from all his plants because that reduces the number of new infections by reducing the attractiveness of the plant to insects. As a result, he rarely runs into infected plants anymore, even though his field is surrounded by the sick plants of other farmers. With fewer bananas to supply the local market— ‘Kayinja’ bananas are used to make beer and a type of gin called waragi—staying ahead of the disease

Above right Banana leaves are often cut and sold

as a food wrapping but this practice is now being discouraged, for fear that

contaminated tools may spread BXW.

Right Frederick Kisegerwa

with the forked stick he uses to snap off male buds. That

reduces the risk of insect transmission, but he has to

remain vigilant not to spread BXW with contaminated

tools.

A new banana disease that takes no prisoners has emerged in East Africa. Bioversity’s experience with bugtok, a very similar disease in Asia, gave it an opportunity to promote simple yet effective control techniques to local partners. After some persuasive efforts Ugandan authorities agreed to trial those techniques and put them to work in farmers’ fields.

Dealing with a deadly banana disease

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has enabled Frederick Kisegerwa to double his income.

Bioversity is also actively trying to rein in the disease on a broad front. For the past few years, the regional office in Uganda has been involved in efforts to coordinate a two-pronged regional strategy. There is a management component to help farmers to sustain production in affected areas and to prevent the spread of the disease, and a surveillance component to spot new outbreaks. And to ensure that the advice they offer is based on sound evidence, Bioversity scientists in collaboration with colleagues at the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) in Uganda have also been testing control options as part of the USAID-funded Uganda Agricultural Productivity Enhancement Program.

BXW is caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum. Bacteria normally get into the plant through a wound of some sort. Inside the plant they multiply rapidly and, when the plant is wounded again, they emerge as an exudate that is the source of fresh infections. This bacteria-laden ooze may be carried to healthy plants by flying insects or by farm tools, if farmers move from infected to uninfected plants without cleaning their tools in between.

A common type of wound is the opening on the flower stalk made by a fallen bract, the modified leaf that rolls back to reveal flowers. Some varieties have persistent bracts and flowers that stay on the flower stalk and these are less prone to infection from insect transmission. The majority of currently used varieties do lose

their bracts, but it is possible to disrupt insect transmission by removing the male bud at the end of the flower stalk as soon as the last fruits have set.

Removing the male bud, however, carries its own risks. Farmers must take care that they do not actually spread the disease. They are advised to use a forked stick to break off the male bud rather than cutting it off with a knife attached to a stick, which might transmit the disease if the blade has been in contact with the bacterial ooze of an infected plant. This simple measure, and the vigilance of farmers who promptly take action at the first sign of the disease, has prevented BXW from getting a foothold in the region that produces most of the cooking bananas that Ugandans eat at almost every meal. It also helps that the East African highland bananas are

Automated information on test-tube banana plantlets

The invisible hand of technology will soon allow Ines van den Houwe, curator of the International Musa Germplasm Collection, to inform online database users of additions to the collection by simply keeping her own records up to date. The genebank management system installed at Bioversity’s International Transit Centre (ITC) in Belgium is scheduled to feed information into Bioversity’s Musa Germplasm Information System (MGIS), which is itself hooked up to the SINGER online database of all accessions

of crops held by the centres supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Each plantlet carries a barcode that is the key to its identity. The computerized system makes it easier to manage the in vitro genebank by storing daily records of everything that was done to each plantlet. Online users of MGIS and SINGER will be spared that level of detail. But every time a new accession is officially added to the collection, the usual information on its identity, its main characteristics and whether it is available for distribution will be automatically sent to the databases. The system will also keep track of where plantlets have been sent. When it comes to bananas, the SINGER database gives data only on ITC accessions, but users wanting to browse the holdings of other banana collections can use MGIS to do so.

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less susceptible to insect transmission than other varieties such as ‘Kayinja’. But even though debudding is easy to implement and has been shown to reduce the incidence of new infections due to insect transmission almost to zero, its uptake is uneven.

At the regional level, a recent survey conducted by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) indicates that debudding is not yet routine. Even though more than 60% of the respondents said that they remove the male bud, less than 25% do so regularly and less than 10% do it with the intention of managing BXW. Indeed, it is proving difficult to persuade ‘Kayinja’ farmers to debud healthy plants and destroy infected plants. Farmers are not in the habit of fussing over their ‘Kayinja’ plants, which are normally very hardy. Some farmers also resist debudding because they think it will reduce the potency of the waragi spirit they distil from the fermented fruit.

Misunderstandings about the process of debudding also abound. Some farmers are not aware that they should use a forked stick rather than a knife, or that timing is important. Waiting too long after the emergence of the last hand of fruits means that wounds from fallen bracts will form, increasing the likelihood of insect transmission. Removing a shrivelled male bud, the first sign of insect transmission, is also

counter-productive. It will not prevent the disease from following its course because the bacteria are already on their way to infect the other parts of the plant. The best solution is to destroy the plant.

The standard recommendation is to dig up the entire mat—the mother plant and its offshoots, called suckers—chop it up and bury the pieces. “This is hugely labour-intensive and has not been readily adopted by farmers,” notes Frank Turyagyanda of Bioversity. Looking for a less cumbersome alternative, Bioversity and NARO scientists tested the effect of removing only the mother plant by simply cutting it off at the base as soon as the male bud started showing signs of being infected. “It does not save the

bunch,” Turyagyanda admits, “but it saves the mat.” Unfortunately this simpler procedure will not work if the fruits have started to ripen and rot or if some of the leaves are already wilted, because by that time the bacteria will have invaded the entire mat. Cutting up infected plants is, in any case, a double-edged sword as it may spread the disease if farmers do not disinfect their knives before using them again on healthy plants.

To avoid transmission through cutting tools, farmers are also asked to refrain from pruning their plants and not to let outsiders, such as traders or brewers, use their own tools when they harvest bunches. The exchange of planting material is also discouraged unless the source is reliable, as healthy looking suckers may come from infected

Right Selling surplus bananas production is a vital source of income for farmers in East Africa.

Below The yellow ooze from a cut banana pseudostem is one tell-tale sign of Banana xanthomonas wilt. A shrivelled male bud and rotting fruits come first, but even if the farmer notices them, it may be too late to save the plant. Prevention is the answer.

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mats in which the infection has gone undetected.

In an unexpected twist, anecdotal evidence suggests that rich farmers may contribute disproportionately to the spread of BXW because they can afford to hire workers who, by moving between fields, may inadvertently help spread the disease. Rich farmers also tend to introduce more planting materials into their fields than small-scale farmers. On the other hand, they are better placed than poor farmers to implement the recommendation to

use disease-free, but more expensive, plantlets produced through tissue culture.

Despite the glitches that inevitably arise when coping with a new disease, more and more success stories show that the disease can be contained. Moreover, research suggests that the bacteria cannot survive for extended periods of time in soil, water or dead plant material such as dry leaves, and thus a six- to eight-month rest period should be sufficient to rehabilitate an infected field. This means that

farmers need not abandon bananas permanently. They can plant a different crop during the wait, but not a crop in which the bacteria can survive, notably maize and sorghum but perhaps other cereals. Non-cereals such as beans, potatoes and cassava are considered safe—at least until such time as research can demonstrate unequivocally which plants can act as a reservoir of the disease.

What is now needed is a concerted effort to spread the word so that farmers in unaffected areas are not caught off guard by the disease. To this end, Bioversity, in collaboration with IITA and the Catholic Relief Services, is providing technical support to the national agricultural research systems of six countries (Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda) through the USAID-funded Crop Crisis Control Project. Together they are producing posters and diagnostic tools, in addition to training staff right down to the community level. Enabling people to recognize the disease contributes to the surveillance efforts deployed by government agencies.

In similar situations, resistant varieties would usually be offered to farmers, but none has been found so far. As with other diseases and pests of banana, breeding for resistance to BXW is a testing process that will require years of dedicated work because of the high levels of sterility of most domesticated bananas. Genetic engineering is an alternative and scientists at a NARO-run biotechnology centre are working on BXW-resistant ‘Kayinja’.

These and other options may become available in the years to come, as scientists identify the solutions that best meet farmers’ needs. In the meantime, the responsibility for safeguarding the livelihoods of banana farmers rests in their own hands, through careful management of their own banana plots. Their communities and governments need to support the farmers’ efforts at local, national and regional levels.

Further informationg.blomme@cgiar.org

MGIS is at http://mgis.inibap.org SINGER is at http://singer.cgiar.org/

Facts and myths about BXW

Until it showed up in central Uganda, the disease was restricted to Ethiopia, where it also attacks ensete, a close relative of the banana. Nobody knows how the disease jumped from Ethiopia to Uganda, given the large distances that separate the producing regions of the two countries. The most likely explanation is the introduction of infected suckers because the other means of transmission do not have the same reach. But as the disease has spread, so have misconceptions.

Q: Are the recommended control measures too costly and labour intensive for smallholders?A: NO! Early removal of the male flowers—which is the best way to prevent insect transmission from infected to healthy plants—is quick, easy and effective. Keeping a field of one hectare free of the disease takes only a couple of hours of work twice a week. Excluding the disease in this way reduces or eliminates the need to uproot and bury infected plants (which is indeed too labour intensive for many farmers to contemplate).

Q: Does debudding make the plant immune to infection?A: NO! A debudded plant is less susceptible to insect transmission but is still at risk of transmission through contaminated tools.

Q: Have resistant varieties been found?A: NO! None of the cultivated varieties tested so far have shown signs of resistance when inoculated with the bacteria.

Q: Are plants infected with BXW poisonous to humans and animals?A: NO! No evidence has ever been found that the bacterium is harmful to humans or animals.

Q: Can bananas be replanted in a heavily infected field?A: YES! Even in the worst situation, when an entire field has been infected, bananas can be replanted after allowing enough time for the bacteria in the soil and infected plant debris to die. Current knowledge suggests that a period of about six to eight months is sufficient.

Q: Can the disease be controlled using chemical products (e.g. pesticides)?A: NO! Since the disease infects the vascular system of the plant, a chemical product that kills the bacteria would be hard to administer. It is also impossible to kill all the insects visiting banana plants.

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Don Pedro has about 1000 cacao trees on his farm in Venezuela. He sells the beans to local buyers but the price fluctuates widely. The farm he inherited from his father used to have many Criollo trees—a traditional type renowned for the flavour of its beans—but over the years he replaced many of them with hybrids because these yielded better than his father’s trees. But that was before some people in the West developed a taste for premium chocolate made from Criollo beans and started to pay up to three times as much for them, and before diseases became the problem they are today. He would like to take advantage of the new markets, and to produce more from his trees; a new project may help him to do so.

The project, funded largely by the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) and coordinated by Bioversity, is a follow-up to one entitled ‘Cocoa Germplasm Utilization and Conservation, a Global Approach.’ The main aim of that effort was to encourage international collaboration in breeding after a decade of low cocoa prices that caused producer countries to scale down their breeding activities. The new project brings farmers into the process of developing new varieties, hence its name: Cocoa Productivity and Quality Improvement, a Participatory Approach. Twelve cacao-producing countries are collaborating on it, together with research institutes in France and the UK.

Farmers still predominantly rely on traditional cacao types, which fall into three groups: the increasingly rare Criollos, Forasteros and Trinitarios (see photos, p. 15). Breeders started to offer improved varieties to farmers in the 1950s, but uptake was very

limited; only about a quarter of the trees on the average farmer’s holding are improved varieties. The main reason for the low uptake was that farmers did not have access to high-yielding varieties that were also disease resistant, in part because not all breeders were targeting diseases and in part because distribution of improved varieties was patchy. So the farmers took to collecting seeds from their own trees, often the improved varieties, and growing them on to replace old trees.

One of the best ways to improve farmers’ livelihoods,

in addition to selecting the best-performing varieties, is

to train farmers to manage their trees more effectively.

Smallholder farmers grow 90% of the world’s cacao, and they often struggle to make a living in a market characterized by boom and bust cycles. High losses caused by pests and diseases also make it hard for them to take advantage of business opportunities. A five-year project that started in 2006 aims to reduce the vulnerability of farmers by working with them to select and distribute improved varieties.

New approachesto cacao breeding

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“But because the seeds are the product of uncontrolled pollination, stands of farmers’ materials tend to be a mixed bag of trees,” says Bertus Eskes, the Bioversity scientist who coordinates the project. “Still, farmers are good at spotting the ones that have high disease resistance and yield.” The promoters of the project hope that, in addition to identifying the best performers, the farmers involved in selection and in the evaluation trials will also accelerate the delivery of superior varieties to other farmers.

The normal procedure for improved varieties fresh out of the breeding programme is first to have their performance evaluated at a field research station. The ones that make the first cut are then shipped out to other stations around the world to be further tested across a range of growing conditions. But because these conditions are rarely in farmers’ fields, breeders run the risk of having their improved varieties rejected when they finally reach the farmers. If farmers are going to reject some varieties—and they are—it’s better that they do it sooner rather than later.

Project scientists started out by surveying cacao trees on more than 3700 farms across Latin America, Africa and Asia. With the farmers they selected 2410 interesting trees, which they then established in farmers’ fields and in trial plots on research stations, where they are being compared with the best available improved varieties. More than 200 trial plots have been established on farms in ten participating countries. A first analysis of the trees’ DNA has shown that the level of genetic diversity in the plants selected from among the farmers’ materials is, on average, as high as in the populations used by breeders. “Some breeders thought it would be lower,” says Eskes. “The fact that it is not suggests that farm materials offer a great potential for obtaining better varieties.”

The true potential of the selected trees will take some time to evaluate as they are still young, but so far the screening of selections from the farmers’ materials has uncovered some individuals in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana that are resistant to Phytophthora pod rot, an economically important disease. In Papua New Guinea, where selection of farm materials started earlier, some of the advanced selections yield up to 60% more than even the best improved varieties.

Many farmers have enthusiastically welcomed the chance to participate in the evaluation of new material and large numbers applied to host a trial on their farm. Where droughts and pests and diseases threaten the survival of the young seedlings, the project gives farmers irrigation equipment and pesticides to help them cope.

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Above Cacao flowers.

Below The three basic types of cacao pod—Criollos,

Forasteros and Trinitarios—differ in colour, size, shape and, most importantly, the

quality of the beans they contain.

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The breeders also need support. Eskes notes that in some countries the number of experienced cacao breeders and scientists has not recovered from the neglect and lack of investment of the 1990s. Moreover, the fact that in most countries extension and breeding services fall under two different administrations makes it difficult for extension workers to help breeders to cope with the extra workload of supervising the on-farm trials in addition to their own trials at the research stations.

Despite these and other obstacles, the project has opened up a previously neglected channel of communication between farmers and breeders. When all the results are in it will be hard

(and probably unwise) to go back to excluding farmers from breeding programmes. It may also speed up the advent of the new, and profitable, cacao varieties that many farmers, including Don Pedro in Venezuela, would like.

Further information b.eskes@cgiar.org

Countries with on-farm trials

Countries with on-station trials

Other participating countries

Costa Rica Venezuela

Peru

Brazil

Ecuador

Nigeria

PapuaNew Guinea

Malaysia

United Kingdom

Ghana

Cote d'Ivoire Cameroon

France

Project participants Countries undertaking on-farm trials

Cameroon

Côte d’Ivoire

Ghana

Nigeria

Brazil

Ecuador

Trinidad

Venezuela

Malaysia

Papua New Guinea

Countries undertaking on-station trials

Costa Rica

Peru

France and the UK are also participating in the project.

Seedlings growing in the nursery prior to planting out and evaluation.

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In the developed world quinoa is something of a novelty, an exotic grain with a slightly fringe reputation for good nutrition and environmental friendliness. In the Andes, where people have cultivated quinoa for around 5000 years, quinoa has been the breakfast, lunch and dinner staple, not to mention snacks and sweets. The rise of quinoa in developed countries created opportunities for poor farmers in one of the harshest agricultural environments in the world, but it brought problems too. Damiana Astudillo, a Mickey Leland Congressional Hunger Fellow, has been working with Bioversity for the past two years to understand the challenges of commercial quinoa cultivation in the southern Bolivian Altiplano.

Conditions on the Altiplano are tough. Temperatures can range from -18°C to 27°C in a day. There is overnight frost 225 days a year, rainfall averages less than 25 mm a year and soils are sandy with very little organic matter. Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) is one

of the few crops that thrives there, and it provides excellent nutrition. Protein content ranges from 11% to 19% and is of very high quality, containing all eight amino acids essential for human health. The seeds are rich in vitamins and minerals too. In fact the United States’ Academy of Sciences describes quinoa as “the most nutritious grain in the world”.

Above Roasting the quinoa seeds is an essential first

step in processing, to loosen the layer of bitter saponins

that cover the seeds.

Left Quinoa is one of the few crops that will thrive at

high altitude and in thin soils.

Promoting neglected and underutilized species can be a double-edged sword. A recent project with the communities that surround the Uyuni Salt Flat in Bolivia showed that although farmers’ incomes rose, their use of crop diversity decreased and there may also have been bad nutritional consequences for farm families. But the study also showed ways to improve matters.

Quinoa: a delicate balancing act

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Although the communities of the southern Altiplano lack education, basic infrastructure such as roads and running water, and capital, they have not been slow to respond to demand for their wonder grain in Bolivian towns and cities and in the developed world. Production increased from about 5600 tonnes in 1980 to more than 13 500 tonnes in 2001, the result not only of doubling the area of land under cultivation, but also of a 25% increase in yield per hectare. In her study, Astudillo identified four major impacts of this switch from subsistence to commercial production.

Quinoa diversity is being lost. A single variety now makes up 37% of production, and the top three account for 72%. This is the flip side of market demand; although it has boosted the total amount of quinoa being grown, it has also created a focus on commercially valuable varieties that are homogeneous and large-seeded. Smaller-seeded and more variable varieties are no longer being planted as much.

Flowing from this have been changes in dietary diversity and impacts on the environment. Farmers and their families used to eat quinoa at almost every meal. Now, with the money they earn from quinoa sales, they can afford to buy other sorts of food. One reason they buy these foods is that they are much easier to prepare, while quinoa is time-consuming and laborious. With the demands on their time that commercial growing makes, it is no surprise that many women have turned to pasta, rice and processed foods. Dietary diversity has increased but, paradoxically, nutrition may have suffered, because the substitute foods are not nearly as nutritious as quinoa.

The shift to commercial cultivation has also impacted on the environment. Previously, family farms were small and quinoa was grown mostly on the slopes. Villagers reap larger harvests by moving quinoa off the hills and onto the flat lands, but this has promoted the use of inappropriate technology, such as disc harrows, that promotes wind erosion. In addition farmers are not leaving the land fallow as long as they once did, leading to further erosion and a depletion of the few nutrients present in the soil.

Finally, there has been an impact on the social life of the community. Before, although plots were family-based, families helped one another when needed and often worked together.

Now, with increased mechanisation, the work tends to be much more solitary and families do not need one another’s help. The result is that they are more isolated.

Astudillo did more than merely record what was going on in the communities of the southern Altiplano. She also worked with the people to see whether things could be changed. Workshops

aimed at parents with young children focused on the importance of good nutrition and raised awareness of the value of local quinoa, but one of the perennial complaints about quinoa is that it is boring. Working with the parents, Astudillo helped to develop new recipes that made quinoa more appealing, including a quinoa pancake that had children queuing up for more. Even the best recipes, however, do not address the fundamental problem: preparing quinoa is a pain.

Quinoa seeds are coated with a layer of saponins; exceedingly bitter, toxic chemicals. To get rid of this layer, women first toast the seeds on a metal tray over a fire. This helps to loosen

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Growth in planted area and yield of quinoa in the southern Altiplano.

1980 1985 1990 1995 1999 2000 2001Area (ha) 10 580 16 237 20 786 20 575 20 685 20 575 20 685Harvest (t) 5 639 7 680 8 938 10 740 13 342 13 271 13 549Yield (t/ha) 0.53 0.47 0.43 0.52 0.65 0.65 0.66 Source: Prospeccion de demandas de la cadena productive de quinoa en Bolivia. Fundacion para el Desarrollo Technologico del Altiplano, Bolivia

Percentage of total cropping area planted to individual varieties. ‘Blanca’ produces the large, white seeds favoured in commercial markets.

Variety Per cent of planted area

Blanca 37

Pandela 21

Toledo 14

Pisankalla 8

Negra 5

Kellu 5

Rosa bianca 3

Elva 3

Utusaya 2

Punete 2

Above After roasting and treading the seeds, the

saponin dust is removed by winnowing in a steady

breeze.

Left Just some of the quinoa diversity, much of which is

disappearing from farmers’ fields as they concentrate on a few more marketable

varieties.

Right The quinoa harvest drying in the fields.D

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the saponin layer and, while it may not be strictly necessary, enhances the flavour of the seeds. Then the hot seeds are tipped into a stone basin and the women tread them with their bare feet. The friction loosens the saponin coat and reduces it to dust. Treading also often gives the women blisters and chronic lower back pain. The saponin powder now has to be cleaned from the seeds, which is done by waiting for a day with the right kind of steady wind and then winnowing the seeds repeatedly so that the wind blows the dust away. Finally the seeds are rinsed in a couple of changes of water and set out to dry.

Quite apart from the sheer drudgery and discomfort of the work, which is usually carried out in the bitter cold of winter immediately after the harvest, it can take 6 hours to process 12 kg of quinoa.

In some ways, this proved an easy nut to crack. Astudillo worked with Rolando Copa, a local mechanic and inventor, to build a quinoa processing machine that duplicates all the necessary steps and that reduces the time it takes to process 12 kg of seed from 6 hours to 7 minutes. The communities were at first deeply sceptical that the machine would produce acceptable quinoa. To overcome that, Astudillo arranged for blind tastings in five different communities. Not only did the families find the machine’s quinoa totally acceptable, they even said they would be willing to pay up to 75 US cents to process 12 kg. This is crucially important, because the machines cost around US$ 800, more than a family could afford. There are, however, precedents for making

a machine available as an income-generating opportunity to a family or an entire community, not least from Bioversity’s work in the Kolli Hills of India (see Annual Report 2005, p. 23). As Astudillo notes, “the machine will reduce the burden of women’s work, have a positive impact on their health and potentially improve nutrition by facilitating the consumption of a nutritious grain. This is a low-input, high-impact opportunity for any organization committed to practical rural development and the improvement of livelihoods of marginalized populations.”

That leaves the problem of quinoa diversity in the field. Although the local genebank stores samples of essentially all known quinoa varieties, so that they will be available for future use, for the farmers those varieties appear to have little value at the moment. Nevertheless, diverse quinoa varieties do have different agronomic and nutritional properties. Some are more frost resistant, for example, while

others mature early. Nutritionally, there is the overall difference in protein quantity, which varies from 11% to 19%, and there are almost certainly differences in other components, like vitamin and mineral contents. These differences were probably much more important when farmers were growing quinoa as an element of their survival strategy. These days, farmers are freely abandoning most varieties to concentrate on the few that have the greatest value in the market. That may one day prove to be an error, in which case the samples stored ex situ will have earned their keep.

On the other hand, many families are using the extra money they are earning to educate their children, and those children may well decide to abandon the hard life that quinoa cultivation represents. In which case, there might be no immediate need for the genebank samples. But where, then, will the developed world get its quinoa?

Further information m.bellon@cgiar.org

Above Women clean the seed immediately after threshing.

Left This machine, developed with the help of a local mechanic and engineer, eliminates the drudgery of quinoa preparation. And the sceptical villagers agreed in blind trials that the quinoa it produces tastes just fine. Investors are needed to help villagers obtain the machines.

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Coconut trees can live 100 years or more, but only neglected individuals are allowed to reach such an age. In commercial plantations, the ’useful’ life of a tree is usually 50 years, after which it is replaced. Field genebank specimens are also taken down, either when they start producing fewer nuts because they are too old or when they have grown too tall to work with easily, generally when they exceed about 10 metres.

In Côte d’Ivoire, Bioversity is working with local partners to implement the Global Crop Diversity Trust’s decision to support the regeneration of 50 coconut accessions designated most at risk of being lost from the field genebank. Each accession held at the Marc Delorme Research Station of the Centre National de Recherche Agronomique (CNRA) is represented by tens of trees, many of which date to the establishment of the collection in 1967, although some go as far back as the 1950s. At the time, the number of trees planted was dictated more by circumstances than by any desire

to represent adequately the genetic diversity of an accession. As a result the number of trees per accession can be as low as 69 or as high as 359. From now on, says Jean-Louis Konan, the project leader and curator of the coconut collection, each accession will be represented by 100 trees.

The CNRA collection is one of the five regional field genebanks that make up the International Coconut Genebank (ICG) set up by Bioversity’s International Coconut Genetic Resources Network (COGENT). These genebanks share the responsibility of conserving representative diversity from all over the tropics. The CNRA collection became the hub for the Africa and Indian Ocean region when it joined the ICG in 1996. The 99 coconut accessions conserved in Côte d’Ivoire consist of varieties collected from Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. Only two accessions originate from Côte d’Ivoire, with another 15 from elsewhere in Africa.

For all the useful services they provide, field collections cannot afford to be retirement homes for coconut trees that have passed their productive peak. As part of its strategy to support important genebank collections, the Global Crop Diversity Trust is funding the regeneration of half of a field collection in Côte d’Ivoire.

Raising a new generationof coconut trees

Controlled pollination of coconuts is a complex

procedure. Hervé Lomoh, a technician, prepares to climb the tree, which can be 30 metres tall, in order

to cut off the male flowers. These are buried to prevent accidental cross pollination.

A special bag protects the female flowers, which will be fertilized with pollen from the

same variety. Months later the ripe nuts are collected

and set to sprout in nursery beds, ultimately to replace

the older trees.

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Regenerating an accession is all about making sure that the genetic integrity of the variety is maintained. That means ensuring that the female flowers are not fertilized with the pollen from another variety. This is easier for Dwarf types than for Tall types (most cultivars fall into one of these two groups), and not just because they are short. Dwarf types tend to have male and female flowers that mature at the same time on a given tree, so it is a reasonably simple

matter to pollinate the female flowers and then prevent other pollen getting to them. Tall types are protandrous; the male flowers generally shed their pollen before the female flowers on the same tree are receptive.

To control pollination, some trees are chosen to be the females and others the males. For each accession, the project team tried to select a maximum of 100 females and 30 males, based on their health status and past agronomic performance. On the female trees, the male flowers are removed three months before the start of pollination and the female flowers bagged to keep them pure. Male flowers are also bagged to prevent accidental contamination,

and the pollen collected. Fortunately, coconut pollen can be easily frozen until the female flowers are ready. When they are, the pollen is thawed and placed on the receptive females, which are then bagged again.

The harvest begins about a year later. The nuts are sown in a nursery where they stay until the best seedlings can be planted out in the field. The project started in 2005, and in the first two years 37 accessions were carefully pollinated. By the end of 2007, the final 13 accessions slated for regeneration will be growing in the nursery.

So far, 6000 nuts representing 22 accessions have been harvested. That’s many more than strictly necessary for regeneration but Jean-Louis Konan quotes a local saying: “There is no such thing as too much meat in a sauce”. He recalls an instance when he was able to replace losses incurred in another project because he had produced more seedlings than needed for regeneration alone.

But there’s another reason to grow surplus seedlings, beyond simple insurance. The CNRA genebank is part of the International Coconut Genebank and Côte d’Ivoire has signed the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, so the genebank has to be able to supply material on request to users world-wide. The extra nuts will help to meet those obligations.

Further information m.george@cgiar.org

The team at the CNRA station in Côte d’Ivoire, where 22 of 50 threatened coconut varieties have already been regenerated.

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Support from the International Development Research Centre in Canada allowed Bioversity to launch a project on dietary diversity in sub-Saharan Africa some three years ago. The core idea was to link traditional food and plant resources to health in rural and urban populations, and the project made substantial progress (see, for example, What’s on the menu? Annual Report 2005, p. 6; Getting a grip on nutrition and diversity, Annual Report 2004, p. 6; Traditional foods, modern diets and the conservation of biodiversity, Annual Report 2002, p. 9). The impact, particularly in Kenya, has been considerable. On the practical side, thanks to a broad-based partnership and tightly focused efforts, awareness of the benefits of traditional leafy vegetables is substantially higher than it was three years ago. More to the point, people in Nairobi are buying and eating them more often (see Assessing the impact of our work, p. 24).

The project also helped to create a platform that enabled a wide range of stakeholders to come together to discuss the ways in which dietary diversity and traditional foods could be incorporated into national policies. In Kenya, the project was able to influence the content of two Bills being prepared for parliament. One covers nutrition and dieticians and the other addresses Kenya’s policy on food security and nutrition. Both are progressing with support from several ministries and other important players with an interest in better health and better use of biodiversity. The building of such alliances, which are now able to take things forward with wide support, has been a valuable result of the project in each of the four countries in which it operated. These networks will be able to tackle national

policy questions more effectively, but the business of gathering data and evidence has not been neglected. At the Institut de technologie alimentaire in Senegal, the emphasis was on analysing specific varieties and dishes made with them. The study focused on two crops, Moringa oleifera, known locally in French as nébédaye, and Hibiscus sabdariffa, roselle or bissap.

Moringa, also known as drumstick tree for its pods and horseradish tree

The use of traditional and local crops to boost nutrition and income has become a core element in Bioversity’s efforts to research agricultural biodiversity to improve livelihoods. A project on dietary diversity came to an end in 2006 and provides a sound basis for expanded work in this area.

A tasty approach to dietary diversity

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Above The fleshy calyces of roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa)

flowers are generally made into a refreshing

drink, but they and, more importantly, the leaves are

also an important traditional vegetable.

Left The project team in

Senegal. Meissa Diouf, local project leader, is on the far

left.

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for the taste of its roots, is a source of many important resources, including leafy greens and seedpods for human consumption and animal forage. It is generally grown as a shrubby, short-lived perennial that is highly resistant to pests and diseases and does well with no fertilizers and with fluctuating availability of water. The study looked at three varieties, one produced by the World Vegetable Centre (AVRDC), one from the Centre pour le développement de l’horticulture (CDH) in Dakar, Senegal, and a more traditional variety known as ‘Kothiary’.

Hibiscus, like moringa, is grown for many purposes and goes by many names, among them roselle, kakade and bissap. The flowers and, especially, the calyces that enclose and support the flower petals, go into refreshing drinks and teas, but in Senegal it is the leaves and flowers that play a primary role in the diet. As with moringa, the study looked at three varieties, called ‘Pied 22’, ‘Vert de Fatick’ and ‘PS24’.

People, of course, eat meals, not leaves. So in addition to sampling the leaves for chemical analysis, the Senegalese team also mounted missions to two rural areas and one urban centre specifically to collect traditional recipes. They spoke to women and collected information about the sorts of foods they prepared for their families and recorded detailed recipes for dishes that used moringa or hibiscus leaves. The recipes were then prepared in the laboratory for biochemical analysis and testing.

At this stage, the measurements remain very basic, as even that information is not very plentiful. Nevertheless, two impressions emerge. One is that these species are rich in nutrition, as has always been said. The other is that there are differences between varieties with respect to some constituents. Quantities of some minerals were two or three times higher in one variety than another. The differences showed up in meals too. For example, a dish called gnankatang made with hibiscus cultivar ‘Vert de Fatick’ contained four times as much zinc as the same dish made with cultivar ‘PS24’ (0.88 vs 0.22 mg per 100 g), although the dishes contained identical amounts of iron at 0.42 mg per 100 g. Dishes made with different varieties of moringa did not show great differences in mineral contents, although couscous with ‘Kothiary’ sauce contained only 1.67 mg of iron per 100 g, compared to 2.33 mg of iron per 100 g in the same dish made with the CDH variety. Samples are too few at this stage for the observed differences to be statistically significant, but the results are certainly indicative of important differences among varieties and recipes, a topic that would probably repay further study.

In addition to the biochemical analyses, and to extend that information, the team also asked a panel of tasters to assess dishes made with the different varieties. Again, some interesting and suggestive differences emerged. For example, an overwhelming 11 out of 12 (92%) panellists preferred the

hibiscus variety ‘PS24’ over ‘Pied 22’. In a larger test of moringa, 12 of 22 (55%) panellists preferred the sauce made with the CDH moringa, while 7 (32%) preferred the same sauce made with ‘Kothiary’. Why remains elusive, although the Senegalese scientists note that “the CDH variety is richer in protein, vitamin C, zinc, potassium, sodium and iron”. (The AVRDC variety was first choice of only 3 (13%) of the panellists.)

Patrick Maundu, an ethnobotanist at Bioversity who has worked closely with the project, points out that while moringa seems to be more nutritious than hibiscus, hibiscus is good as a source of zinc. “There is no one species that is better in everything,” says Maundu, “hence the need to diversify diets. Many cultures have a tendency to mix vegetables because they complement each other. It helps with bioavailability too. The essence of all this is ‘we should diversify’.”

Given the insights and practical impact of this first project, a second proposal has been prepared for possible support by the International Development Research Centre. This second phase will extend the findings to more countries and seek to promote policies that will support and sustain the use of dietary diversity.

Further information p.maundu@cgiar.org

Composition of Moringa oleifera and Hibiscus sabdariffa varieties.

For each species, three different varieties were measured. This table shows maximum and minimum average values, regardless of variety, for some constituents. For absolute measures, the quantity is per 100 g fresh weight.

Moringa oleifera Hibiscus sabdariffa

Min. Max. Min. Max

Sugars (%) 1.33 2.96 0.51 0.53

Vitamin C (mg) 15.10 19.76 0.76 1.41

Protein (g) 7.11 8.18 5.26 5.46

Zinc (mg) 1.39 1.93 1.68 1.81

Calcium (mg) 500.30 600.30 154.10 223.10

Sodium (mg) 65.10 143.00 9.77 70.23

Potassium (mg) 85.20 216.50 116.20 113.00

Iron (mg) 6.01 11.30 3.61 4.05

Young leaves of Moringa oleifera.

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Studies that featured in previous Annual Reports (see, for example, Assessing the impact of better bananas, 2003, p. 23, and New light on the value of old rice, 2002, p. 23) have recently been published in Valuing Crop Biodiversity: On-farm Genetic Resources and Economic Change (CABI, 2006). Here we report on two more recent studies.

African leafy vegetablesBioversity has long extolled the multiple virtues of traditional African leafy vegetables (ALVs) across sub-Saharan Africa. They are nutritious, they thrive in marginal environments, they can be a source of income, especially for women, and they are environmentally friendly. Developing the sector, however, requires not only that farmers be able to supply traditional leafy vegetables but also that shoppers, especially in urban areas, want to buy them. Alas, early indications were that urban shoppers did not think much of traditional leafy vegetables. They were considered unattractive and backward, and many urban dwellers did not know how to prepare them properly. They were also often sold under unhygienic conditions. Project partners developed a multi-pronged campaign to address these concerns, and a study by Bioversity staff member Elizabeth Obel-Lawson discovered that the campaign had worked. “Between 2003 and 2005 there was a tenfold increase in consumer demand for ALVs in supermarkets despite their high cost in comparison to exotic vegetables,” Obel-Lawson’s report notes. But there is far more to her report.

The campaign used several channels of communication to get the message across, including media such as newspapers, magazines and radio.

But it turned out that word of mouth may have been the most important. Roughly 60% of respondents said that they got information from their family (especially mothers) and other social relationships. However, there may well be a multiplier effect at work here, with some people who are receptive to messages in the media and who then distribute those messages further through their network of interpersonal relationships. Obel-Lawson cautions that future campaigns cannot afford to

The sons of Josephine Osea, Programme Assistant to Bioversity International’s

Regional Director, shop for traditional leafy vegetables

in a supermarket in Nairobi, Kenya. African

leafy vegetables are very nutritious, containing high

levels of folic acid, iron, calcium and magnesium

among other nutrients.

Bioversity’s intention is to use research on agricultural biodiversity to improve lives. Good intentions, however, are not enough. We need to do what we set out to do, and then show that it has the desired effect on people. Impact assessment studies indicate that the organization is on the right road.

Assessing the impact of our work

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ignore broadcast media, and that for maximal effectiveness the messages should be credible, consistent and of high quality. The campaigns provide the information; interpersonal communication then helps to drive changes in behaviour.

There is evidence, too, of such changes in behaviour (or at least self-reported changes). About 14% of the people surveyed said that they had changed their diet by replacing red meat, cabbage, kale or spinach with traditional African leafy vegetables. Government too was responsive. Legislators introduced a Bill for a nutrition policy for Kenya and the National Food Policy was reviewed with the possibility of including traditional foods; these initiatives are making progress.

Obel-Lawson’s study, for which she was awarded an MA in communications studies, formed an integral part of the African Leafy Vegetables project and added to the value of the project by pinpointing some of the project impacts and helping to identify the drivers of change. Bioversity intends similar impact assessment studies to be a feature of all future projects.

Further information e.obel-lawson@cgiar.org

Banana take-up in TanzaniaOne of the problems that bedevils plant breeding work is that farmers may not show any interest in the improved materials developed. Getting farmers to participate in breeding and selection activities can help (see Participating in better breeding efforts, Annual Report 2002, p. 19). It can also be helpful to study the various factors that influence a farmer’s decisions to adopt the varieties on offer. In 1997 the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), which hosts the Bioversity banana collection, began a project to multiply pest- and disease-resistant varieties obtained by Bioversity from the Fundación Hondureña de Investigación Agricola (FHIA) and to introduce them to farmers in the Kagera region of Tanzania through the Belgium-funded Kagera Community Development Programme (KCDP). Impact studies by Bioversity scientists

with colleagues at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) shed light on farmers’ choices and preferences and the impact on their lives.

In its first three years the project distributed about 2.5 million suckers of the new varieties, which on-farm tests had established would produce bunches that weighed an average of 18.9 kg, compared with 9.7 kg for local varieties. In 2002, a survey in Kagera region revealed that 29% of households had planted at least one new banana variety. However, in high-rainfall areas, where pests and diseases put farmers under more pressure, adoption was 100%. In medium-rainfall areas, only 6% of the farmers had grown one of the new varieties. A more recent study of 260 households in Kagera extends these findings considerably. For example, even outside the specific area where the project was distributing the new varieties, about one in five farmers was growing one of the new varieties. This reflects the strength of farmer-based informal systems for exchanging new planting material. Exchanges like this generally do not involve money, depending instead on social relationships; the fact that varieties spread from farmer to farmer, even when this was not a formal part of the project, suggests that this mode of dissemination should be deliberately incorporated into future projects.

The hybrids were intended to reduce the vulnerability of households to losses from banana pests and diseases, which they did. Households in areas where the project had operated lost

about 3% of their expected yield to pests and diseases, compared with losses of about 8% suffered by households outside the project area. What really matters, though, is not whether the farmers were actually in the project area, but whether they were growing hybrid bananas. Those outside the project who had obtained the hybrids from friends or relations enjoyed the same yield benefit, pointing up again not just that hybrids do what they were intended to but also that informal farmer-to-farmer distribution channels are really important.

Because the hybrids yield larger bunches, they enable a household to meet its needs with fewer banana mats (the mother plant and offsets from it). The family can eat more bananas themselves, while their consumption is actually a smaller proportion of their harvest, so their nutrition should be improved at the same time as they can earn more. The additional productivity of the FHIA hybrids also frees land that can be used to grow other crops and to support livestock. Farmers who take advantage of this can earn twice as much as non-adopters each year and are less dependent on bananas.

One of the crucial differences that the impact study identified concerned visits from extension agents. Farmers who received more visits from extension workers were much more likely to grow the hybrid bananas. While this requires further study, it does suggest that concentrating on extension and targeting relatively deprived households (in terms of income and of wealth), at the same time as strengthening informal exchange, may be the most effective means of improving the livelihoods of banana farmers in East Africa.

Further informationNkuba J, Edmeades S and Smale M. 2006. Gauging potential based on current adoption of banana hybrids in Tanzania. Genetic Resource Policies. Promising Crop Biotechnologies for Smallholder Farmers in East Africa: Bananas and Maize. Brief 21. IFPRI and Bioversity International.

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A hybrid FHIA banana variety on trial.

26

The 2006 Annual General Meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, in Washington DC, gave one of its most prestigious prizes, the CGIAR Science Award for Outstanding Partnership, to the CGIAR Genebank Community, which is coordinated by the System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP). Bioversity International has been a strong supporter of SGRP since its inception in 1994 and provides the SGRP Secretariat.

The award recognized the efforts of all concerned to conserve and manage collections of plant genetic resources as global public goods. It

is hard to overstate how important the collections are. Centre genebanks contain more than 650 000 accessions of some 3000 species of staple crops, forages and agroforestry species essential to human food security and nutrition. These genebanks are fundamental to the CGIAR’s work on plant improvement, and they hold the world’s largest collections of plant diversity for food and agriculture. The genebanks are repositories not only of plant diversity but also of information and expertise unique in the scientific and agricultural spheres. This information, and the plant accessions

2006 was a truly significant year for the world’s food security. Genebanks were upgraded and new agreements on access to materials and information were signed. The System-wide Genetic Resources Programme collected an award for managing the upgrade, just one of several honours conferred in 2006.

Partnering to improve global public goods

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Jane Toll receives the award for outstanding partnership from Kathy Sierra, Chair of

the CGIAR.

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it describes, is available to all users without restriction through SINGER, the System-wide Information Network on Genetic Resources (Annual Report 2005, p. 28). Since 1994, the CGIAR genebanks have distributed over 300 000 samples to national agricultural research programmes in developing countries.

The crop genetic resources held by the centres are vital to the CGIAR’s achievement of its objectives. An investment in securing the collections is thus an investment in the CGIAR’s chief goals. Over the past ten years, the centres have taken serious measures to review their genebank operations and to ascertain the costs of effectively and efficiently conserving the collections under their care. This allowed them to identify practical and strategic actions to ensure that they continue to be able to meet their obligations.

These costing studies provided the sound basis needed to secure World Bank support to upgrade the facilities

of genebanks holding these collections. Phase 1 of this upgrading exercise, with a budget of US$ 13.6 million, ended in 2006. The Partnership Award recognizes the impressive

The CGIAR’s Communications Award went to the African leafy vegetables communications project.

ACE, the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences, gave a Silver Award to the travelling exhibit No End to the Banana, from Bioversity’s Commodities for Livelihoods programme. Geneflow, the magazine about agricultural biodiversity that Bioversity produces each year, won a Gold Award.

Nabk Municipality in Syria recognized the Nabk Project (Annual Report 2005, p. 13) with a Certificate of Appreciation for support to the local community.

The President of Tunisia awarded first prize on environment to the Association pour la sauvegarde de la Medina de Gafsa, partner in the Date Palm Project (Annual Report 2004, p. 10), for the protection and use of biodiversity in the oasis of Gafsa.

Japan’s Capacity Building Program for African Agricultural Researchers gave an award to Mathias

Ngonyo, a Bioversity research partner at the National Museums of Kenya.

Bioversity and Nepalese partner LI-BIRD presented an award-winning poster at the First International Conference on Indigenous Vegetables and Legumes, in Hyderabad, India. Another poster, on work to protect banana plants from parasitic nematodes, won second place in the student competition at the meeting of the International Tropical Nematology Society.

The Virlanie Foundation, a French NGO working with Bioversity to help homeless children in the Philippines (Annual Report 2004, p. 14), was selected to appear in the CGIAR’s Innovation Marketplace Awards.

The Asian Pacific Seed Association gave a Special Award to Professor H.F. Chin, Bioversity Honorary Research Fellow, for his contributions to seed science, technology and industry.

Other awards to Bioversity International

Sorting and cleaning maize seeds at the

CIMMYT genebank.

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achievements made, which reflect the twin targets of the project: to upgrade the facilities at the centre genebanks and to put those facilities to work. Throughout the project, the SGRP Secretariat coordinated the activities at the different centres, helping them to deliver on their commitments and working to ensure the highest possible level of cooperation. Based on the recommendations of an external review of the project, the World Bank is funding a second phase, to start in January 2007. Phase 2, again managed by SGRP at Bioversity, will complete the upgrading and will support the CGIAR’s intention to play a central role in the development and implementation of a global system for the conservation and use of crop diversity in support of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

Being part of the SGRP has greatly enhanced the capacity of CGIAR centres to meet the policy and technical expectations that their in-trust role has created. The policy dimension goes back to the 1990s, when the centre genebanks signed agreements with FAO that placed their collections in trust for humanity. Thereafter the centres, through the Inter-Centre Working Group on Plant

Genetic Resources and the SGRP, were instrumental in offering unbiased and technically sound advice to the parties negotiating the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. When that came into force in 2004, the genebank community turned its attention to renegotiating the in-trust agreements and the terms of the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) that accompanies materials and binds them into the Treaty. The negotiated text of the SMTA was adopted by the Governing Body of the International Treaty at its first meeting in Madrid in June 2006 and will be used from 1 January 2007. The new in-trust agreements with FAO were formally signed on World Food Day, 16 October 2006. These are momentous steps for the CGIAR and for global food security, and required the SGRP to help centres to formulate and promote a unified position on difficult policy questions.

As the partnership award recognized, the SGRP has brought coherence, effectiveness and efficiency to the genetic resources activities of the CGIAR system in support of its development goals. Jane Toll, SGRP coordinator, collected the award on behalf of the entire community, and was at pains to point out that it really was a team effort, and, as she put it, “teamwork is the essence of SGRP”.

Further informationj.cherfas@cgiar.org

Emile Frison (left), Director General of Bioversity

International, signs the new in-trust agreements

with Jacques Diouf (right), Director General of FAO.

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Annexes2006

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The main financial impact has been to reduce Bioversity’s operating reserve to 67 days. The organization is on target in 2007 to rebuild reserves to a minimum of at least 75 days, as recommended by the CGIAR. Bioversity’s liquidity reserve level of 104 days remains in line with the CGIAR’s recommended range of 90–120 days.

Starting in 2007 the CGIAR will introduce two new financial indicators to assist and monitor performance. Centres will be required to report their ‘indirect cost ratio’, which reflects the level of overhead in the organization and consequently the leanness of the back-office functions. Bioversity—at 15.5%—has one of the lowest indirect cost ratios in the CGIAR system. The second new indicator is the ‘management of donor receivable/payable’ ratio, which reflects the flow of funds from committed donors. Bioversity’s donor receivable/payable ratio at 0.73 is also commendable.

The organization has come through the unforeseen financial shocks of 2006 in reasonably good shape, a tribute to our monitoring procedures and to the efforts of all staff to limit potential damage. As we rebuild our position in 2007 we can look forward to further consolidation in 2008 and beyond.

Gerard O’Donoghue Director, Corporate Services

Funding increased for many reasons. For example, Bioversity’s expanded mandate and revised strategy, with its focus on helping people to make use of agricultural biodiversity, has attracted increased support from many donors. In addition, the new strategy has opened doors to more funding opportunities from some non-traditional sources. In particular, the growing emphasis on nutrition has helped Bioversity access funding outside the traditional CGIAR agricultural pockets. Existing donors who have significantly increased their contributions include Italy, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and UNEP-GEF. Ireland is among the new donors to Bioversity.

From a purely financial perspective 2006 proved to be a challenging year. The organization was on track to record a surplus of US$0.5 million for the year. However we learned late in 2006 and early in 2007 of the inability of two of our major donors to pay their 2006 contributions. Problems channelling funds to CGIAR centres meant that the European Commission was unable to make its 2006 contribution to the CGIAR as a whole. This amounted to a loss of US$1.73 million for Bioversity. And early in February 2007 we learned that the Italian Government would be unable to pay its regular 2006 contribution to the CGIAR system, which amounts to US$1.7 million for Bioversity. Together these constitute a loss of US$3.4 million in income. This has been partly offset by the receipt of US$0.4 million in compensatory funding from the World Bank. In the end, Bioversity recorded an unexpected operating loss of US$2.5 million for the year.

Financereport 2006

Bioversity grew strongly in the period from 2001 to 2005. Annual expenditures rose from US$23 million in 2001 to US$35 million in 2005, an increase of 54%. Thereafter, 2006 represented a year of consolidation in which expenditures remained at the US$35 million level.

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Financial indicators 2006 2005 2004

Year-end results US$ 000s -2474 652 2791

Short-term liquidity Days 104 122 127

Long-term reserves Days 67 91 91

Indirect cost ratio % 15.5 16.2 16.8

Top 15 donors to Bioversity in 2006

2006US$ 000

World Bank 3349

Netherlands 2760

Italy 2611

United Kingdom 1790

Belgium 1684

UNEP/GEF1 1563

Canada 1283

Switzerland/SDC 1235

Germany 1085

IFAD 813

Norway 788

CFC2 670

Sweden 605

Ireland 605

USA 423

Australia 423

1 United Nations Environment Programme/ Global Environment Facility 2 Common Fund for Commodities

Bioversity’s Board of Trustees has responsibility for ensuring that an appropriate risk management system is in place which enables management to identify and take steps to mitigate significant risks to the achievement of the centre’s objectives.

Risk mitigation strategies have been ongoing at the centre and include the implementation of systems of internal control which, by their nature, are designed to manage rather than eliminate the risk. The institute also endeavours to manage risk by ensuring that the appropriate infrastructure, controls, systems and people are in place throughout the organization.

The Board has adopted a risk management policy that has been communicated to all staff together with a detailed management guideline. The policy includes a framework by which the institute’s management identifies, evaluates and prioritizes risks and opportunities across the organization; develops risk mitigation strategies that balance benefits with costs; monitors the implementation of these strategies; and reports, in conjunction with finance and administration staff and internal audit, semi-annually to a Task Group of the Board and annually to the full Board, on results.

The Board is satisfied that Bioversity has adopted and implements a comprehensive risk management system.

Risk management

Breakdown of total expenditure (%)

0

20

40

60

80

100

Depreciation Operational travel Collaborators/Partnership costs Supplies and services Personnel

2006 2005

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AAS/AFORNET

Use and conservation of indigenous fruit tree diversity for improved livelihoods in Eastern Africa

3

ACIAR

Mitigating the threat of banana Fusarium wilt: understanding the agroecological distribution of pathogenic forms and developing disease management strategies

196

Technical support for regional plant genetic resources development in the Pacific

36

Subtotal 232Alliance Executive

Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property—CAS-IP

129

Chief Alliance Officer 269Subtotal 398

Austria

Developing training capacity and human resources management

142

Development of strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of Prunus africana to improve the livelihood of small-scale farmers

99

Subtotal 241AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center

Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property—CAS-IP

3

Belgium

Collaborative Musa research—KUL 241Improving livelihoods in Musa-based systems in

Central Africa 253

INIBAP Musa conservation research 374INIBAP Transit Centre—KUL 329Subtotal 1197

Brazil

Amazon initiative research activities 20Establishment of the international coconut

genebank for South America and the Caribbean 50

The Lusophone initiative 4Subtotal 74

CFC

Cocoa productivity and quality improvement: a participatory approach

659

Diversifying market opportunities for Musa (global workshop)

2

Farmer participatory evaluation and dissemination of improved Musa germplasm

6

Promotion of banana exports from Sudan and Ethiopia to the Middle East and Europe

3

Subtotal 670

Christensen Fund

Strengthening socio-economic and cultural institutions to support agrobiodiversity management for development in Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic

16

CIDA

Dietary diversity: a challenge linking human health with plant genetic resources

13

System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP)

106

Subtotal 119CIFOR

Wild fruits of Cameroon 6COL

Distance learning Intern—Asia, Pacific and Oceania

11

Distance learning Intern—human resource development

6

Subtotal 17CORAF/WECARD

Sustainable use of biodiversity: deepening the methodological basis of participatory plant breeding

41

CTA

Co-publication of a self-learning manual on seed handling in genebanks Phase I

26

Learning tools for developing regional training capacity in law and policy of relevance to the management of plant genetic resources

27

Support to improved management and use of Musa information in Africa

12

Workshops on proposal writing and management of information projects

71

Subtotal 136DFID

Assessing the impact of the banana xanthomonas wilt on household livelihoods in East Africa

22

European Countries

ECPGR—Phase VII 604EUFORGEN—Phase III 400Subtotal 1004

European Commission

ASARECA CGS—Sub-grant contract for support to BARNESA for CGS funding stream–B research projects

140

Evoltree network of excellence 49Support to BARNESA 124Subtotal 313

Restrictedgrants 2006

For the Year Ended December 31, 2006 (US dollar 000s)

��

FAO

Conservation and sustainable management of globally important agricultural heritage systems

42

Preparation of materials for the communications strategy of the International Treaty

7

Publication of the Plant Genetic Resources Newsletter

75

Support of the development of a knowledge base on genetic resources of horticultural crops

23

Using markets to promote the sustainable utilization of crop genetic resources

20

Subtotal 167Finland

Associate Expert—Malaysia 92FONTAGRO

Development of biological pest control products 9Soil quality and health of bananas in Latin

America and the Caribbean86

Subtotal 95The Ford Foundation

Conservation and use of crop genetic diversity to control pests and diseases in support of sustainable agriculture

43

Gatsby Foundation

Improving the management of banana and plantain genetic resources for Africa

209

GFAR

Associate Scientist—Montpellier, France 122GTZ / BMZ

An international information system for the genetic resources of crop wild relatives

169

Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property—CAS-IP

8

Gene flow risk assessment of genetically engineered crops

12

Genetic Resources Policy Initiative—GRPI 140Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species 372Intern—Banana soil health internship 3Intern—Development of global crop ex situ

conservation strategies8

Promotion of neglected and indigenous vegetable crops for nutritional health in Eastern and Southern Africa

8

Promotion of neglected indigenous vegetable crops for nutritional health in Eastern and Southern Africa–Phase II

6

Subtotal 726

ICIPE

Conservation of biodiversity of Gramineae and Arthropods

5

IDRC

Access and plant genetic resources for food and agriculture

14

Adaptive management of seed systems and gene flow (Mexico, Cuba and Peru)

50

Banana xanthomonas wilt workshop 4Dietary diversity: linking traditional foods and

plant genetic resources to rural and urban health in sub-Saharan Africa

87

Global stakeholder meeting on biodiversity for food and nutrition

39

In situ conservation on-farm: lessons learned and policy implications

3

Regional consultative workshop on genetic engineering/GMOs for development in East and Southern Africa

7

Strengthening the scientific basis of in situ conservation of agricultural biodiversity on-farm—Nepal

24

Symposium on managing biodiversity 7Utilization of banana (Musa sp.) based

biodiversity to improve livelihoods in East Africa

95

Subtotal 330IFAD

Enhancing the contribution of neglected and underutilized species to food security and to incomes of the rural poor

13

Programme empowering Sahelian farmers to leverage their crop diversity assets for enhanced livelihood strategies

418

Programme for overcoming poverty in coconut-growing communities: Coconut genetic resources for sustainable livelihoods

334

Technical support to IFAD’s technical advisory division

48

Subtotal 813IFAR

Capacity-building fellowships 11Italy

Associate Expert—Institutional learning and change

2

Associate Expert—Socio-economic studies on neglected and underutilized species in Central and West Asia and North Africa

55

Subtotal 57

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Japan

Associate Expert—Kenya 45Community plant genetic resources use and

conservation in East Africa200

Japan capacity building program for African agricultural researchers

8

Subtotal 253Korea, Republic of

Associate Scientist—Medicinal plants 90Medicinal plants in 16 countries in Asia–Pacific 40Molecular characterization of collections of some

underutilized crops of diverse origins24

Workshop on development of database and e-descriptors of medicinal plants in 12 Asian countries

20

Subtotal 174KUL

VLIR projects in Asia 2Luxembourg

Conservation and maintenance of grapevine (Vitis L.) genetic resources in the Caucasus and Northern Black Sea region

61

Genetic resources of broad-leaved forest tree species in South-Eastern Europe Phase II

128

Subtotal 189Malaysia

Conservation and use of rare tropical fruit species diversity with potential for enhanced use in Malaysia

11

Conservation of rare and endemic dipterocarps in Malaysia

55

Subtotal 66McGill University

Honorary Research Fellow—dietary diversity: a challenge linking health with plant genetic resources

12

McKnight Foundation

Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property—CAS-IP

4

Mexico

Policy workshop—Support to national genetic resources programme

15

Training programme on plant genetic resources in Mexico

1

Subtotal 16Mickey Leland International

Neglected and underutilized species to food security

33

Morocco

Managing agrobiodiversity for better livelihood in Morocco

23

Multi-Donors to Genetic Resources Policy Initiative – GRPI1

Genetic Resources Policy Initiative expenditure 860Multi-Donors to CGIAR-ICT/KM Coordination2

Chief Information Officer expenditure 304Multi-Donors to Global Crop Diversity Trust3

Global Crop Diversity Trust Campaign Phase II expenditure

1686

Netherlands

Associate Expert—Agricultural economist 104Associate Expert—Conservation and use of crop

diversity for pest and disease management 92

Associate Expert—Conservation and use of tropical fruit biodiversity

77

Associate Expert—Economics of agrobiodiversity 55Associate Expert—Geographic information

systems for plant biodiversity17

Associate Expert—Management of forest genetic resources

53

Associate Expert—Management of forest genetic resources in Sub-Saharan Africa

82

Associate Expert—Nutrition 51Associate Expert—Supporting research on

agricultural biodiversity73

Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property—CAS-IP

165

Institutional learning and change 160Subtotal 929

Norway

Policy unit 79NZAID

Pacific agricultural plant genetic resources network (Papgren)—Phase II

117

Peru

Strengthening the scientific basis of agricultural biodiversity

7

Philippines

Conservation and use of tropical fruit species diversity in the Philippines

50

Introduction, evaluation and adoption of new banana materials in the Philippines

13

Support to the banana development programme in the Philippines

10

Subtotal 73Pioneer

Intern—studies on West African seed systems 1Vavilov-Frankel Fellowship 10Subtotal 11

1. The following provided support for the Genetic Resources Policy Initiative, GRPI: IDRC, The Netherlands and Rockefeller Foundation.

2. The following provided support for CGIAR-ICT/KM Coordination: Alliance Executive and World Bank.

3. The following provided support for the Global Crop Diversity Trust: CIDA, GRDC, SDC and SYNGENTA.

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Princeton University

Intern—Public awareness 2Rockefeller Foundation

Develop common approaches to exchange genetic resources with national and international partners in compliance with the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

15

Diversifying market opportunities—Adding value to bananas

17

Subtotal 32Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna

Programme Assistant 12SDC

Enhancing contribution of home gardens to on-farm management of plant genetic resources and to improve livelihood of Nepalese farmers

3

In situ conservation of agricultural biodiversity—Phase IV

263

Rehabilitation of a waste-dumping site in Nabk (Syria) through the establishment of a biodiversity garden

120

Strengthening the scientific basis of in situ conservation of agricultural biodiversity— Phase V

11

System-wide Genetic Resources Programme 102System-wide PGR Policy Research Unit CGIAR

and SGRP 168

Subtotal 667SIDA

ASARECA technical backstopping to EAPGREN 30Central Advisory Service on Intellectual

Property—CAS-IP17

Genetic resources policy 68Subtotal 115

Spain

Cooperation in the conservation of forest genetic resources in Latin America

69

St Edmund’s College of the University of Cambridge

Interns—Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property—CAS-IP

40

TBRI

Regional information system for banana and plantain for Asia and the Pacific

1

Uganda

Novel approaches to the improvement of banana production in Eastern Africa—the application of biotechnological methodologies

87

UNDP-GEF

Participatory management of date palm plant genetic resources in oases of the Maghreb

105

UNEP-GEF

Community-based management of on-farm plant genetic resources in arid and semi-arid areas of sub-Saharan Africa

48

Conservation and sustainable use of cultivated and wild tropical fruit diversity: promoting sustainable livelihoods, food security and ecosystem service

15

Conservation and use of crop genetic diversity to control pests and diseases in support of sustainable agriculture

3

In situ conservation of crop wild relatives through enhanced information management and field application

681

In situ conservation of agricultural biodiversity (horticultural crops and wild fruit species) in Central Asia

816

Subtotal 1563University of Birmingham

Genetic erosion and pollution assessment methodologies—proceedings of Plant Genetic Resources Forum Workshop 5

7

USAID

Assessing banana xanthomonas wilt, control options on-farm

14

Target project—Increasing productivity and market opportunities for banana in Africa

9

Subtotal 23USDA

Cocoa productivity and quality improvement, a participatory approach

51

VVOB

Associate Scientist—Nematology in Asia 135Associate Scientist—Technology transfer in

Eastern and Southern Africa138

Subtotal 273World Bank

CGIAR genebank upgrades—Musa 50CGIAR genebank upgrades—SGRP/SINGER 72CGIAR genebank upgrades for SGRP monitoring 12CGIAR Genetic Resources Policy Committee 75CGIAR ICT-KM E-publishing project 45CGIAR Virtual resources center project 85ICT-KM II—preparatory phase 188ICT-KM VRC-Web content and usage analysis

(WUA)14

Soil quality and health of bananas in LAC 120System-wide and ecoregional program 300Subtotal 961

Subtotal Temporary Restricted Grants 16 008

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Challenge Programs

Austria

Challenge Program—Unlocking genetic diversity in crops for the resource poor

57

Challenge Program— Generation

2006 GCP fellowship and travel grants 116Application and development of web services

technology8

Capacity-building 206Challenge Program—Unlocking genetic diversity

in crops for the resource poor4

Comparative genomics for gene discovery 11Creation and maintenance of data templates 15Creation of institutional bioinformatics capacity 17Development of GenerationCP domain (data)

models21

Distance learning module for scientists on genetic resource policies and their implications for freedom-to-operate

10

Genetic diversity of global genetic resources 41Genetic resources, genomic, and crop

information systems31

Implementation of web services technology in GenerationCP Consortium

106

Management of GenerationCP central registry 90Musa genome frame-map construction and

connection with the rice sequence 40

Phenotyping in the field: global capacity accessible to the GCP-inventory of phenotyping resources and capacity for the GCP

25

Subprograms leader—2006 149Trait capture for crop improvement 35Subtotal 925

Challenge Program—Harvest Plus

Addressing micronutrient deficiencies in urban and peri-urban populations in West and Central Africa through Musa-based foods

174

Challenge Program—Sub-Saharan Africa

Improving human nutrition and income through integrated agricultural research on production and marketing of vegetables in Malawi and Mozambique

22

Wageningen University

Distance learning module for scientists on genetic resource policies and their implications for freedom-to-operate

10

Subtotal Challenge Programs 1 188

Total Restricted Grants 17 196

Bioversity publicationsBioversity Annual Report 2005

Celebrating 20 years of networking banana and plantain. INIBAP

Annual Report 2005 (English, French and Spanish)

Geneflow 2006 (English and Spanish)

Crop wild relatives (offprint from Geneflow 2006) (English, French,

Spanish and Russian)

FAO-IPGRI Plant Genetic Resources Newsletter Nos 145–148 (with

FAO)

INFOMUSA Vol. 15 Nos 1 & 2 (in English, French and Spanish)

Plant Genetic Resources Abstracts. Vol. 15 (with CABI)

Options and strategies for the conservation of farm animal genetic

resources (with SGRP, FAO, AGROPOLIS, GTZ, ICARDA and ILRI)

Hunger and poverty: the role of biodiversity (with GFU and MSSRF)

Banana Bacterial Wilt Resource CD (with NARO, FAO and IDRC)

Bioversity and domestication of yams in West Africa. Traditional

practices leading to Dioscorea rotundata Poir. (with CIRAD)

Case studies on access and benefit-sharing (with IDRC, GTZ, SDC

and GRPI)

Climatic change and genetic resources in northern Europe. Report

of a Workshop, 18–19 September 2006, Rovaniemi (with ECPGR)

Coconut in Vietnam

Commentary on the development of the Republic of Seychelles

Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing Bill (2005) (with

IDRC, GTZ, SDC and GRPI)

Crop genetic diversity to reduce pests and diseases on-farm:

Participatory diagnosis guidelines. Version I. Bioversity Technical

Bulletin No. 12 (with UNEP, GEF, Ford Foundation, CIP and SDC)

Developing a regional strategy to address the outbreak of banana

Xanthomonas wilt in East and Central Africa (with NARO and IDRC)

Enhancing the use of crop genetic diversity to manage abiotic stress

in agricultural production systems. 23–27 May 2005, Budapest,

Hungary (with SDC, BMZ, DGIS and IDRC)

Fundamentos genéticos y socioeconómicos para analizar la

agrobiodiversidad en la región de Ucayali. Seminario, 16 de enero

de 2003, Pucallpa, Perú (with INIA and CODESU)

Genetic erosion and pollution assessment methodologies.

Proceedings of PGR Forum Workshop 5, Terceira Island,

Autonomous Region of the Azores, Portugal, 8–11 September 2004

(with PGR Forum, MADRP, INIAP, University of Birmingham and the

EU)

Global approaches to cocoa germplasm utilization and conservation

(with CFC and ICCO)

Global conservation strategy for Musa (Banana and Plantain)

Home gardens in Nepal. Proceedings of a national workshop, 6–7

August 2004, Pokhara, Nepal (with LI-BIRD and SDC)

Les fruitiers forestiers comestibles du Cameroun (with SAFORGEN,

CIFOR and IRAD)

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Selectedpublications

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Selectedpublications

Leyes y políticas de importancia para el manejo de los recursos

fitogenéticos (CD-ROM) (with SGRP, IFPRI, GTZ and CTA)

Lois et politiques liées à la gestion des ressources phytogénétiques

(CD-ROM) (with SGRP, IFPRI, GTZ and CTA)

Manual of seed handling in genebanks. Handbooks for Genebanks

No. 8 (with ILRI, FAO and CTA)

Manuel de manipulation des semences dans les banques de gènes.

Manuels pour les banques de gènes No. 8 (with ILRI, FAO and CTA)

Melons of Uzbekistan (with UzRIPI and UzRIVM&P)

On-farm management of agricultural biodiversity in Nepal. Good

practices (with NARC, LI-BIRD and IDRC)

Promising crop biotechnologies for smallholder farmers in East

Africa: bananas and maize. Briefs 19–26 (with IFPRI and CIMMYT)

Report of a Working Group on Prunus — 6th and 7th meeting. Sixth

Meeting, 20–21 June 2003, Budapest, Hungary; Seventh Meeting,

1–3 December 2005, Larnaca, Cyprus (with ECPGR)

Report of a Working Group on Solanaceae. Ad hoc Meeting, held

jointly with the Fifth Meeting of the EGGNET Project, 17 September

2004, Bari, Italy (with ECPGR)

Seed handling in genebanks (CD-ROM) (in English and French) (with

ILRI, FAO and CTA)

Strategic framework for underutilized plant species (with ICUC and

GFU)

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Peer-reviewed publications

Adoukonou-Sagbadja H, Dansi A, Vodouhe R and Akpagana K. 2006.

Indigenous knowledge and traditional conservation of fonio millet

(Digitaria exilis, Digitaria iburea) in Togo. Biodiversity and Conservation

15:2379–2395.

Ajayi SA, Berjak P, Kioko JI, Dulloo ME and Vodouhe RS. 2006.

Observations on in vitro behaviour of the zygotic axes of fluted pumpkin.

African Journal of Biotechnology 5(15):1397–1404.

Ajayi DA, Berjak B, Kioko JI, Dulloo ME and Vodouhue R. 2006.

Responses of fluted pumpkin (Telfairia occidentalis Hook. f.,

Cucurbitaceae) seeds to dessication, chilling and hydrated storage.

South African Journal of Botany 72(4):544–550.

Anupam Dixit, Ma KH, Lee JR, Yu JW, Cho EG and Park YJ. 2006.

Reverse transcriptase domain sequences from Mungbean (Vigna radiata)

LTR retrotransposons: sequence characterization and phylogenetic

analysis. Plant Cell Reports 25:100–111.

Bajracharya J, Steele KA, Jarvis DI, Sthapit BR and Witcombe JR. 2006.

Rice landrace diversity in Nepal: variability of agro-morphological traits

and SSR markers in landraces from a high-altitude site. Field Crops

Research 95:327–335.

Ball T, Vrydaghs L, Van Den Houwe I, Manwaring J and De Langhe E.

2006. Differentiating banana phytoliths: wild and edible Musa acuminata

and Musa balbisiana. Journal of Archaeological Science 33(9):1228–

1236.

Bruskiewich R, Davenport G, Hazekamp T, Metz T, Ruiz M, Simon

R, Takeya M, Lee J, Senger M, Mclaren CG and Van Hintum T. 2006.

Generation Challenge Programme (GCP): standards for crop data.

OMICS: The Journal of Integrative Biology 10(2):215–219.

Chu Z, Fu B, Yang H, Xu C, Li Z, Sanchez A, Park YJ, Bennetzen JL,

Zhang Q and Wang S. 2006. Targeting xa13, a recessive gene for

bacterial blight resistance in rice. Theoretical and Applied Genetics

112(3):455–461.

Davey MW, Keulemans W and Swennen R. 2006. Methods for the

efficient quantification of fruit provitamin A contents. Journal of

Chromatography A 1136(2):176–184.

Delanoy M, Van Damme P, Scheldeman X and Beltran J. 2006.

Germination of Passiflora mollissima (Kunth) L.H. Bailey, Passiflora

tricuspis Mast. and Passiflora nov sp. seed. Scientia Horticulturae

110(2):198–203.

Dussert S, Davey MW, Laffargue A, Doulbeau S, Swennen R and

Etienne H. 2006. Oxidative stress, phospholipid loss and lipid hydrolysis

during drying and storage of intermediate seeds. Physiologia Plantarum

127(2):192–204.

Engels JMM, Ebert WA, Thormann I and de Vicente MC. 2006.

Centres of crop diversity and/or origin, genetically modified crops and

implications for plant genetic resources conservation. Genetic Resources

and Crop Evolution 53(8):1675–1688.

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SelectedpublicationsPeer-reviewed publications (continued)

Eyzaguirre PB. 2006. Agricultural biodiversity and how human culture

is shaping it. In: Cernea MM and Kassam AH, editors. Researching the

culture in agri-culture: social research for international development.

CABI, Wallingford, UK. pp. 264–284.

Frison E, Smith IF, Johns T, Cherfas J and Eyzaguirre PB. 2006.

Agricultural biodiversity, nutrition, and health: making a difference to

hunger and nutrition in the developing world. Food and Nutrition Bulletin

27(2):167–179.

Geuns JMC, Orriach ML, Swennen R, Zhu G, Panis B, Compernolle F

and Van der Auweraer D. 2006. Simultaneous liquid chromatography

determination of polyamines and arylalkyl monoamines. Analytical

Biochemistry 354(1):127–131.

Gwag JG, Chung JW, Chung HK, Lee JH, Ma KH, Anupam Dixit,

Park YJ, Cho EG, Kim TS and Lee SH. 2006. Characterization of new

microsatellite markers in mungbean, Vigna radiata (L.). Molecular Ecology

Notes 6:1132–1134.

Halewood M, Cherfas JJ, Engels JMM, Hazekamp TH, Hodgkin T,

Robinson J. 2006. Farmers, landraces, and property rights: challenges to

allocating sui generis intellectual property rights to communities over their

varieties. In: Biber-Klemm S and Cottier T, editors. Rights to plant genetic

resources and traditional knowledge: basic issues and perspectives.

CABI, Wallingford, UK. pp. 173–202.

Henriet C, Draye X, Oppitz I, Swennen R and Delvaux B. 2006. Effects,

distribution and uptake of silicon in banana (Musa spp.) under controlled

conditions. Plant and Soil 287(1–2):359–374.

Iskandar H, Snook L, Toma T, MacDicken K and Kanninen M. 2006. A

comparison of damage due to logging under different forms or resource

access in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Forest Ecology and Management

237:83–93.

Kafkas SN, Kaska AN, Wassimi N and Padulosi S. 2006. Molecular

characterization of Afghan pistachio accessions by amplified fragment

length polymorphisms (AFLPs). Journal of Horticultural Science and

Biotechnology 81(5):864–868.

Kang CW, Kim SY, Lee SW, Mathur PN, Hodgkin T, Zhou MD and Lee

JR. 2006. Selection of core collection of Korean sesame germplasm by a

stepwise clustering method. Breeding Science 56:85–91.

Kwon SJ, Lee JK, Hong SW, Park YJ, McNally KL and Kim NS. 2006.

Genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationship in AA Oryza species as

revealed by Rim2/Hipa CACTA transposon display. Genes and Genetic

Systems 81(2):93–101.

Latournerie-Moreno L, Tuxill J, Yupit-Moo E, Arias-Reyes L, Cristobal-

Alejo J and Jarvis DI. 2006. Traditional maize storage methods of Mayan

farmers in Yucatan, Mexico: implications for seed selection and crop

diversity. Biodiversity and Conservation 15(5):1171–1795.

Lee SL, Ng KS, Saw LG, Lee CT, Norwati M, Tani N, Tsumura Y and

Koskela J. 2006. Linking the gaps between conservation research and

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conservation management of rare dipterocarps: a case study of Shorea

lumutensis. Biological Conservation 131(1):72–92.

Ma KH, Kim KH, Anupam Dixit, Yu JW, Chung JW, Lee JH, Cho EG,

Kim TS and Park YJ. 2006. Newly developed polymorphic microsatellite

markers in Job’s Tears (Coix lacryma-jobi L.). Molecular Ecology Notes

6:689–691.

Mace ES, Mathur PN, Izqierdo L, Hunter D, Taylor MB, Singh D,

Delacy IH, Jackson GVH and Godwin ID. 2006. Rationalization of taro

germplasm collections in the Pacific Island region using simple sequence

repeat (SSR) markers. Plant Genetic Resources – Characterization and

Utilization 4(3):210–220.

Mbida Mindzie C, De Langhe E, Vrydaghs L, Doutrelepont H, Swennen

R, Van Neer W and De Maret P. 2006. Phytolith evidence for the early

presence of domesticated banana (Musa) in Africa. In: Zeder MA, Bradley

DG, Emshwiller E and Smith BD, editors. Documenting domestication:

new genetic and archaeological paradigms. University of California Press,

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA. pp. 68–81.

Moens T, Araya M, Swennen R and De Waele D. 2006. Reproduction and

pathogenicity of Helicotylenchus multicinctus, Meloidogyne incognita and

Pratylenchus coffeae, and their interaction with Radopholus similis on

Musa. Nematology 8(1):45–58.

Morimoto Y, Maundu P, Kawase M, Fujimaki H and Morishima H. 2006.

RAPD polymorphism of the white-flowered gourd (Lagenaria siceraria)

landraces and its wild relatives in Kenya. Genetic Resources and Crop

Evolution 53(5):963–974.

Mukasa HH, Ocan D, De Waele D, Rubaihayo P and Blomme G. 2006.

Effect of a multi-species nematode population on the root, corm and

shoot growth of East African Musa spp. genotypes. Biology and Fertility

of Soils 43(2):229–235.

Naithani R, Varghese B, Sahu KK, Dulloo ME and Naithani SC. 2006.

Post harvest storage physiology of Gmelina arborea Roxb. seeds. Indian

Journal of Plant Physiology 11(1):20–27.

Ndungo V, Eden-Green S, Blomme G, Crozier J and Smith JJ. 2006.

Presence of banana xanthomonas wilt (Xanthomonas campestris

pv. musacearum) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Plant

Pathology 55(2):294.

Ocampo J, Dambier D, Ollitrault P, Coppens D’Eeckenbrugge G, Brottier

P, Froelicher Y and Risterucci AM. 2006. Microsatellite markers in Carica

papaya L.: isolation, characterization and transferability to Vasconcellea

species. Molecular Ecology Notes 6(1):212–217.

Ocampo J, Coppens D’Eeckenbrugge G, Bruyere S, de Lapeyre L and

Ollitrault P. 2006. Organization of morphological and genetic diversity of

Caribbean and Venezuelan papaya germplasm. Fruits 61(1):25–37.

Pérez-Hernandez JB, Swennen R and Sagi L. 2006. Number and

accuracy of T-DNA insertions in transgenic banana (Musa spp.) plants

characterized by an improved anchored PCR technique. Transgenic

Research 15(2):149–150.

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Scheldeman X, Van Damme P, Romero Motoche J and Urena Alvarez

JV. 2006. Germplasm collection and fruit characterisation of cherimoya

(Annona cherimola) in Loja province, Ecuador, an important centre of

biodiversity. Belgian Journal of Botany 139(1):27–38.

Shono K and Snook L. 2006. Growth of big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia

macrophylla King) in natural forests in Belize. Journal of Tropical Forest

Science 18(1):66–73.

Smith J, Colan V, Sabogal C and Snook L. 2006. Why policy reforms fail

to improve logging practices: the role of governance and norms in Peru.

Forest Policy and Economics 8(4):458–469.

Smith MK, Hamill SD, Langdon PW, Giles JE, Doogan VJ and Pegg KG.

2006. Towards the development of a Cavendish banana resistant to race

4 of fusarium wilt: gamma irradiation of micropropagated Dwarf Parfitt

(Musa spp., AAA group, Cavendish subgroup). Australian Journal of

Experimental Agriculture 46(1):107–113.

Strosse H, Schoofs H, Panis B, Andre E, Reyniers K and Swennen

R. 2006. Development of embryogenic cell suspensions from shoot

meristematic tissue in bananas and plantains (Musa spp.). Plant Science

170(1):104–112.

Tahi GM, Kébé BI, N’Goran JKA, Sangaré A, Mondeil F, Cilas C and

Eskes A. 2006. Expected selection efficiency for resistance to cacao pod

rot (Phytophthora palmivora) comparing leaf disc inoculations with field

observations. Euphytica 149(1):35–44.

Talwana H, Speijer PR, Gold CS, Swennen R and De Waele D. 2006.

Effect of nematode infection and damage on the root system and plant

growth of three Musa cultivars commonly grown in Uganda. Nematology

8(2):177–189.

Thormann I, Dulloo M and Engels J. 2006. Techniques for ex situ plant

conservation. In: Henry RJ, editor. Plant conservation genetics. Food

Products Press, Binghampton, New York, USA. p. 7–36.

Van den Bergh I, Nguyet DTM, Tuyet NT, Nhi HH and De Waele D. 2006.

Influence of Pratylenchus coffeae and Meloidogyne spp. on plant growth

and yield of banana (Musa spp.) in Vietnam. Nematology 8(2):265–271.

Witcombe JR, Gyawali S, Sunwar S, Sthapit B and Joshi KD. 2006.

Participatory plant breeding is better described as higher client

oriented plant breeding. II. Optimal farmer collaboration in segregating

generations. Experimental Agriculture 42(1):79–90.

Wuyts N, De Waele D and Swennen R. 2006. Extraction and partial

characterization of polyphenol oxidase from banana (Musa acuminata

Grande naine) roots. Plant Physiology and Biochemistry 44:308–314.

Wuyts N, De Waele D and Swennen R. 2006. Activity of phenylalanine

ammonia-lyase, peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase in roots of banana

(Musa acuminata AAA, Grande naine and Yangambi km5) before and

after infection with Radopholus similis. Nematology 8(2):201–209.

Wuyts N, Lognay G, Swennen R and De Waele D. 2006. Nematode

infection and reproduction in transgenic and mutant Arabidopsis and

tobacco with an altered phenylpropanoid metabolism. Journal of

Experimental Botany 57:2825–2835.

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Wuyts N, Maung ZTZ, Swennen R and De Waele D. 2006. Banana

rhizodeposition: characterization of root border cell production and

effects on chemotaxis and motility of the parasitic nematode Radopholus

similis. Plant and Soil 283(1/2):217–228.

Wuyts N, Swennen R and De Waele D. 2006. Effects of plant

phenylpropanoid pathway products and selected terpenoids and

alkaloids on the behaviour of the plant-parasitic nematodes Radopholus

similis, Pratylenchus penetrans and Meloidogyne incognita. Nematology

8(1):89–101.

Yeaman S and Jarvis A. 2006. Regional heterogeneity and gene flow

maintain variance in a quantitative trait within populations of lodgepole

pine. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

273(1594):1587–1593.

Yoon JW, Kim HH, Ko HC, Hwang HS, Cho EG, Sohn JK and Engelmann

F. 2006. Cryopreservation of cultivated and wild potato varieties: effect of

subculture of mother-plants and of preculture of shoot tips. Cryoletters

27:211–222.

Zhu GY, Geuns JMC, Dussert S, Swennen R and Panis B. 2006. Change

in sugar, sterol and fatty acid composition in banana meristems caused

by sucrose-induced acclimation and its effects on cryopreservation.

Physiologia Plantarum 128(1):80–94.

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Projects

All Bioversity activities are carried out within one of 15 Projects managed by the Programmes and the Research and Support Units

Diversity for Livelihoods Programme

Project E01 Agricultural Biodiversity and Ecosystems is concerned with developing practices that use agricultural biodiversity to maintain and improve productivity, resilience and resistance in production systems; developing procedures and practices that use diversity in production systems to support ecosystem services for livelihoods; and securing the diversity of the wild–cultivated interface to support livelihoods.

Project E02 Community Management of Agricultural Biodiversityis concerned with helping farmers and communities to manage and mobilize agricultural biodiversity by determining the social processes that contribute to the maintenance of diversity and identifying ways to strengthen these processes.

Project E03 Agricultural Biodiversity, Human Health and Welfareaims to increase knowledge and awareness about the strategic roles that biodiversity plays in human health and welfare, and to increase the use of biodiversity in food and nutritional security, income generation, control of pests and diseases, and in culture, aesthetics and recreation.

Understanding and Managing Biodiversity Programme

Project E04 Conservation of Agricultural Biodiversityaims to enhance the effectiveness of conservation and management of agricultural biodiversity, both at genepool and ecosystem levels; and to assess and monitor genetic diversity and genetic erosion.

Project E05 Use of Genetic Resources to Improve Livelihoodsaims to increase the use of conserved germplasm through the development of tools and methodologies to identify useful traits within conserved germplasm for the benefit of farmers and breeders.

Project E06 Conservation and Sustainable Use of Forest Biodiversityfocuses on developing knowledge, methods and tools for the conservation and sustainable use of forest biodiversity for use by national institutions; and on strengthening institutional and policy frameworks for forest biodiversity.

Project E07 Management, Access and Use of Genetic Resources Informationaims to improve the management of, access to and use of genetic resources information through standardizing information gathering and management, facilitating exchange of and access to information (including that generated by the CGIAR), and capacity building.

Improving Livelihoods in Commodity Based Systems Programme

Project E08 Conservation and Sustainable Use of Coconut and Other Commoditiesaims to promote the optimal conservation of the genetic diversity of coconut, cacao and other commodities, and to promote greater use of this diversity to improve the well-being of smallholder farmers.

Project E09 Conserving, Understanding and Improving Musa Biodiversityaims to develop technologies for the effective conservation of the genetic diversity of banana and plantain (Musa), and for its characterization and sustainable use in both conventional and transformation-based crop improvement.

Project E10 Use of Musa Biodiversity to Improve Livelihoodstargets important stakeholders in national Musa sectors to improve their access to information, methods and other resources, which will enable rural communities to use biodiversity in Musa-based systems for improved well-being.

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Global Partnerships Programme

Project E11 Regional Collaborations for Sustainable Management of Agricultural and Forest Biodiversityaims to strengthen and facilitate regional collaboration on plant genetic resources for better management of these resources.

Project E12 Mobilizing International Partnerships to Use and Conserve Agricultural Biodiversityaims to increase the effectiveness of international partnerships, plans and initiatives for the conservation and use of agricultural (including forest and aquatic) biodiversity. Through the project, Bioversity carries out its responsibilities as the convening centre for the System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP) and as host of the GFAR Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species.

Policy and Law Research and Support Unit

Project E13 Enabling Policy Environments for the Use and Conservation of Agricultural Biodiversitymakes contributions to genetic resources policy development at global, regional, national and CGIAR system-wide levels. The Project is also the administrative home for the CGIAR Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property (CAS-IP) and provides the secretariat for the Genetic Resources Policy Committee (GRPC) of the CGIAR.

Capacity Development Research and Support Unit

Project E14 Strengthening Human Capacity to Manage Agricultural Biodiversityaims to strengthen the human capacity of developing countries to enable them to better manage and maintain their agricultural biodiversity.

Public Awareness Research and Support Unit

Project E15 Raising Awareness to Create Support for Agricultural Biodiversityfocuses on increasing the awareness of the potential of agricultural biodiversity to improve human well-being, and of the work that is being done by Bioversity and the CGIAR to harness this potential for the benefit of people.

The international status of Bioversity International is conferred under an Establishment Agreement which, by December 2006, had been signed by the governments of:

Algeria, Australia, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, China, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Slovakia, Sudan, Switzerland, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda and Ukraine.

Establishment agreement

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Board of Trustees

BOARD CHAIR

Dr Anthony K. GregsonOakview EastPO Box 262WarracknabealVictoria 3393Australia

MEMBERS

Dr Ganesan Balachander*The Ford Foundation55 Lodi EstateNew Delhi 110003India

Dr Emile FrisonDirector GeneralBioversity InternationalVia dei Tre Denari, 472/a00057 MaccareseRomeItaly

Dr Peter Hazell*Imperial College LondonWye CampusKent TN25 5AHUnited Kingdom

Dr Antonio La ViñaAteneo School of Government4F, Ateneo Professional SchoolsRockwell Drive, Rockwell CenterMakati City 1200Metro ManilaPhilippines

Dr Marianne Lefort**Head of Plant Breeding DepartmentINRA - DGAPRD 10 route de Saint-Cyr78026 Versailles CedexFrance

Dr Olga F. LinaresSmithsonian Tropical Research InstituteUnit 0948APO AA 34002-0948BalboaPanama

Dr Phindile Lukhele-Olorunju*Agricultural Research CouncilGroup Executive: Grain and Industrial CropsPO Box 8783Pretoria 0001South Africa

Prof. Luigi MontiDepartment of Soil, Plant and Environment SciencesUniversità di Napoli, Federico IIVia dell’Università, 10080055 PorticiNaplesItaly

Dr Shivaji Pandey*Director, Plant Production and Protection DivisionFAOViale delle Terme di Caracalla00100 RomeItaly

Prof. Dr Ana SittenfeldDirector, Office of International AffairsUniversity of Costa RicaSan PedroSan JoseCosta Rica

Dr Stephen SmithPioneer Hi-Bred International Inc.7300 NW 62nd AvePO Box 1004JohnstonIowa 50131USA

Dr Mahmoud Solh**Director, Plant Production and Protection DivisionFAOViale delle Terme di Caracalla00100 RomeItaly

Dr Florence Wambugu**Chief Executive OfficerAHBFIRunda Estate, Off Limuru RoadMimosa Vale, #215PO Box 642-99621Village MarketNairobiKenya

Dr Paul ZuckermanZuckerman & Associates105 Grosvenor RoadLondon SW1V 3LGUK

* Joined during 2006** Left during 2006

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OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR GENERALFRISON, Dr Emile Director General (Rome, Italy)

ATTA-KRAH, Dr Kwesi Deputy Director General (Rome, Italy)

HARDING, Dr Paul Assistant Director General (Rome, Italy)

BAUER, Ms Birgitta Project Office Manager (Rome, Italy)

CHERFAS, Dr Jeremy Assistant to the DG, Board and Public

Relations (Rome, Italy)

MACLEAN, Ms Sheryl Personal Assistant to the Director

General (Rome, Italy)

SANDS, Ms Patti Programme Specialist, Institutional

Learning and Change (Rome, Italy)

WATANABE, Dr Kazuo Honorary Research Fellow

(Osaka, Japan)

WATTS, Ms Jamie Scientist, Impact Assessment and

Evaluation (Rome, Italy)

DIVERSITY FOR LIVELIHOODS PROGRAMMEBELLON, Dr Mauricio Director, Diversity for Livelihoods

Programme (Rome, Italy)

DE PONTI, Mr Tomek** Associate Scientist, Socio-economics

(Rome, Italy)

EYZAGUIRRE, Dr Pablo Senior Scientist, Anthropology and

Socio-economics (Rome, Italy)

GIULIANI, Ms Alessandra Associate Scientist, Socio-economics

of Neglected and Underutilized Crops

(Rome, Italy)

GRUM, Dr Mikkel Scientist, Genetic Diversity

(Nairobi, Kenya)

HERMANN, Dr Michael Senior Scientist, Genetic Diversity

(Cali, Colombia)

JARVIS, Dr Devra Senior Scientist, In situ Conservation

(Rome, Italy)

JOHNS, Prof. Timothy Honorary Research Fellow

(Quebec, Canada)

KRUIJSSEN, Ms Froukje Associate Scientist, Market Analysis

(Serdang, Malaysia)

MORIMOTO, Mr Yasuyuki Associate Scientist, Post Doctoral

(Nairobi, Kenya)

MUSINGUZI, Mr Enock* Associate Scientist, Nutrition

(Nairobi, Kenya)

NASR, Dr Noureddine Regional Coordinator, GEF-UNDP Date

Palm Project (Tunis, Tunisia)

NDUNG’U-SKILTON, Ms Julia Associate Scientist, In situ

Conservation (Nairobi, Kenya)

PADULOSI, Dr Stefano*** Senior Scientist, Integrated

Conservation Methodologies and Use

(Rome, Italy)

PERALES RIVERA, Honorary Research Fellow

Mr Hugo Rafael* (Chiapas, Mexico)

QUEK, Dr Paul Scientist, Documentation/Information

(Serdang, Malaysia)

RHOUMA, Mr Abdelmajid** National Coordinator, GEF-UNDP Date

Palm Project (Tunis, Tunisia)

SMALE, Dr Melinda** Senior Economist (50%)

(Washington, DC, USA)

SOKA, Mr Geoffrey Associate Expert, Pest and Diseases

(50%) (Kampala, Uganda)

STHAPIT, Dr Bhuwon Ratna Scientist, In situ Crop Conservation

(Pokhara, Nepal)

THOMPSON, Dr Judith Science Writer/Process Manager

(Rome, Italy)

TURDIEVA, Dr Muhabbat*** Regional Project Coordinator for

UNEP-GEF Project in Central Asia

(Tashkent, Uzbekistan)

UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGING BIODIVERSITY PROGRAMMESNOOK, Dr Laura Director, Understanding and Managing

Biodiversity Programme (Rome, Italy)

ALERCIA, Ms Adriana Germplasm Information Specialist

(Rome, Italy)

ATIENO, Mr Frederick Information and Documentation Officer

(Nairobi, Kenya)

BARI, Mr Abdullah Scientist, PGR Information/Data

Management and Analysis

Methodologies (Aleppo, Syria)

BOZZANO, Mr Michele Programme Specialist, Forest Genetic

Resources (Rome, Italy)

BROWN, Dr Anthony Honorary Research Fellow (Canberra,

Australia)

CHANDRABALAN, Ms Dorothy Scientific Assistant (Serdang, Malaysia)

CHAVEZ, Dr Jose Luis** Conservation Specialist, In situ Crop

Genetic Resources (Cali, Colombia)

DE VICENTE, Dr M. Carmen Senior Scientist, Plant Molecular

Genetics (Cali, Colombia)

DEL GRECO, Ms Aixa Scientific Assistant (Rome, Italy)

DIAS, Ms Sonia Programme Specialist, Documentation

and Information (Rome, Italy)

DULLOO, Dr Eshan Project Coordinator, Conservation of

Agricultural Biodiversity (Rome, Italy)

DURAH, Dr Kheder Regional Network Manager/Information

Specialist (Aleppo, Syria)

ENGELMANN, Dr Florent** Honorary Research Fellow

(Petit-Bourg, Guadeloupe)

Professionalstaff

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EYOG-MATIG, Dr Oscar Scientist, Forest Genetic Resources/

Co-ordinator, SAFORGEN

(Cotonou, Benin)

FRANCO, Mr Tito Documentation and Information

Programme Specialist (Cali, Colombia)

GAIJI, Mr Samy Project Coordinator, Management,

Access and Use of Genetic Resources

Information (Rome, Italy)

GAIJI, Mr Stephane*/** Honorary Research Fellow

(Rome, Italy)

GUARINO, Mr Luigi Honorary Research Fellow (Suva, Fiji)

HONG, Mr Lay Thong Forest Genetic Resources Specialist

and APFORGEN Facilitator

(Serdang, Malaysia)

JARVIS, Dr Andy* Senior Scientist, Spatial Analyst

(Cali, Colombia)

KEIZER, Mr Menno Associate Scientist, Agricultural

Economics (Serdang, Malaysia)

KWEKA, Mr Demetrius** Associate Scientist, Conservation

and Use of Forest Genetic Resources

(Nairobi, Kenya)

LANE, Ms Annie Global Project Coordinator, Crop Wild

Relatives Project (Rome, Italy)

LARJAVAARA, Dr Markku Associate Scientist (Serdang, Malaysia)

MARANDU, Mr Wilson Conservation Scientist (Nairobi, Kenya)

MATHUR, Dr Prem N. Scientist, Crop Diversity for Pest and

Disease Management and Associate

Scientist, South Asia Associate

Coordinator (New Delhi, India)

RAO, Dr N. Kameswara** Scientist, Germplasm Conservation

(Nairobi, Kenya)

RAO, Dr V. Ramanatha Project Coordinator, Use of Genetic

Resources to Improve Livelihoods

(Serdang, Malaysia)

SCHELDEMAN, Dr Xavier Scientist, Conservation and Use of

Neotropical PGR (Cali, Colombia)

SKOFIC, Mr Milko Database and Programmer Analyst

(Rome, Italy)

SOOD, Mr Rajesh Information System Analyst

(Rome, Italy)

THORMANN, Ms Imke International Information System

Project Coordinator/Programme

Specialist, Plant Genetic Resources

Information Management (Rome, Italy)

THOMSON, Dr Lex* Senior Scientist, Forest Biodiversity

(Rome, Italy)

TRAFICANTI, Ms Hope* Science Writer/Process Manager

(Rome, Italy)

VAN ZONNEVELD,

Mr Maarten* Associate Scientist (Cali, Colombia)

WILLEMEN, Ms Louise** Associate Scientist (Cali, Colombia)

GLOBAL PARTNERSHIPS PROGRAMMETOLL, Ms Jane Director, Global Partnerships

Programme (Rome, Italy)

BIJ DE VAATE, Ms Marije Associate Scientist, ABFU

(Nairobi, Kenya)

BORDONI, Mr Paul Scientific Assistant, Global Facilitation

Unit for Underutilized Species

(Rome, Italy)

DAOUD, Ms Layla Communications and Information

Assistant (Rome, Italy)

ENGELS, Dr Jan Genetic Resources Management

Advisor (Rome, Italy)

HODGKIN, Dr Toby Principal Scientist (Rome, Italy)

HOESCHLE-ZELEDON, Coordinator, Global Facilitation Unit for

Dr Imgard Underutilized Species (Rome, Italy)

COMMODITIES FOR LIVELIHOODS PROGRAMMEMARKHAM, Dr Richard Director, Commodities for Livehoods

Programme (Montpellier, France)

AKYEAMPONG, Dr Ekow Regional Coordinator, West and

Central Africa (Douala, Cameroon)

ARNAUD, Ms Elizabeth Genetic Resources Information

Specialist (Montpellier, France)

BATUGAL, Dr Ponciano A.** Senior Scientist, COGENT Coordinator

(Serdang, Malaysia)

BELALCAZAR, Dr Sylvio** Honorary Research Fellow

(Turrialba, Costa Rica)

BLOMME, Dr Guy Associate Scientist, Assistant to

Regional Coordinator

(Kampala, Uganda)

CALDERON PARDO, Administrative Officer

Mr Helder (Turrialba, Costa Rica)

DOCO, Ms Hélène Information/Communication Specialist

(Montpellier, France)

ESCALANT, Dr Jean-Vincent** Senior Scientist, Musa Genetic

Resources (Montpellier, France)

ESKES, Dr Bertus Coordinator, CFC/ICCO/IPGRI Cocoa

Project (Montpellier, France)

GEORGE, Dr Maria Luz* Coordinator, COGENT

(Serdang, Malaysia)

KAMULINDWA, Project Administrator

Mr Julius Araall (Kampala, Uganda)

KARAMURA, Dr Deborah Musa Genetic Resources Specialist

(Kampala, Uganda)

Professionalstaff

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KARAMURA, Dr Eldad Regional Coordinator, Eastern and

Southern Africa (Kampala, Uganda)

LUSTY, Ms Charlotte Scientist, Programme and Strategy

Development (Montpellier, France)

MOLINA, Dr Agustín Regional Coordinator

(Los Baños, Philippines)

OLIVEROS, Mr Oliver GFAR/DURAS Project Coordinator

(Montpellier, France)

OSIRU, Mr Moses** Associate Scientist (Kampala, Uganda)

PEREZ VINCENTE, Honorary Research Yellow

Dr Luis Fernando* (Turrialba, Costa Rica)

PICQ, Ms Claudine Coordinator, Information/

Communication and Publications

(Montpellier, France)

POCASANGRE, Dr Luis Associate Scientist, Technology

Transfer (Turrialba, Costa Rica)

PONSIOEN, Mr Guido Information/Documentation Specialist

(Montpellier, France)

ROSALES, Dr Franklin Regional Coordinator, Latin America

and Caribbean (Turrialba, Costa Rica)

ROUX, Dr Nicolas Senior Scientist, Coordinator, Musa

Genomics and Genetic Resources

(Montpellier, France)

RUAS, Dr Max Database Manager and Computer

Technology Specialist

(Montpellier, France)

STAVER, Dr Charles Senior Scientist, Sustainable Musa

Production and Utilization

(Montpellier, France)

TINZAARA, Mr William* Associate Scientist (Kampala, Uganda)

SWENNEN, Prof. R. Honorary Research Fellow

(Heverlee, Belgium)

VAN DEN BERGH, Dr Inge Associate Scientist, Technology

Transfer (Los Baños, Philippines)

VAN DEN HOUWE, Ms. Inès Scientist, Germplasm Conservation

(Heverlee, Belgium)

VEZINA, Ms Anne Editor/Scientific Writer

(Montpellier, France)

POLICY RESEARCH AND SUPPORT UNITHALEWOOD, Dr Michael Head, Policy Research and Support

Unit (Rome, Italy)

CHISHAKWE, Mr Nyasha Policy Specialist (Nairobi, Kenya)

KAMAU, Mr Kennedy Web Developer, GRPI (Nairobi, Kenya)

LETTINGTON, Dr Robert Policy and Legal Specialist, GRPI

(Nairobi, Kenya)

LOPEZ NORIEGA, Ms Isabel* Legal Specialist (Rome, Italy)

CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH AND SUPPORT UNITGOLDBERG, Ms Elizabeth Head, Capacity Development

Research and Support Unit

(Rome, Italy)

RUDEBJER, Mr Per* Scientist, Capacity Development

Research and Support Unit

(Rome, Italy)

PUBLIC AWARENESS RESEARCH AND SUPPORT UNITRAYMOND, Ms Ruth Head, Public Awareness Research and

Support Unit (Rome, Italy)

MOORE, Ms Cassandra Programme Specialist, Public

Awareness (Rome, Italy)

MOORE, Dr Gerald Honorary Research Fellow

(Rome, Italy)

HUMAN RESOURCES UNITFINOCCHIO, Mr Francesco Director, Human Resources

(Rome, Italy)

LAMBERT, Ms Ingrid Human Resources Manager

(Rome, Italy)

LIBERTO, Ms Giselle Human Resources Officer (Rome, Italy)

RASMUSSON, Ms Lotta** Human Resources Advisor

(Rome, Italy)

ROSE, Ms Sarah* Senior Human Resources Officer

(Rome, Italy)

CORPORATE SERVICESO’DONOGHUE, Mr Gerard Director, Corporate Services

(Rome, Italy)

BUONAIUTO, Mr Massimo Multimedia/Web Specialist

(Rome, Italy)

DI PAOLO, Mr Fabio Programme Specialist, Publications

Distribution and Marketing

(Rome, Italy)

GARRUCCIO, Ms Maria Library and Information Services

Specialist (Rome, Italy)

GLOVER, Ms Melanie Budget/Audit Officer (Rome, Italy)

HARMANN, Ms Karen Senior Accountant (Rome, Italy)

KANE-POTAKA, Ms Joanna Head, Information Marketing and

Management (Rome, Italy)

LUZON, Ms Josephine Finance Manager (Rome, Italy)

NEATE, Mr Paul Information Dissemination and

Communications Manager

(Rome, Italy)

PAPINI, Ms Silvia Office Manager (Rome, Italy)

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STABILE, Mr Lorenzo Database Developer/Information

Systems Analyst (Rome, Italy)

TAZZA, Ms Patrizia Design/Layout Specialist (Rome, Italy)

THOMPSON, Ms Helen Programme Specialist, Library and

Information Services (Rome, Italy)

VALORI, Mr Dario Information Technology Manager

(Rome, Italy)

REGIONAL OFFICESSub-Saharan AfricaBAIDU-FORSON, Mr Joseph Regional Director (Nairobi, Kenya)

AVOHOU, Mr Hermane Scientific Assistant, SAFORGEN

(Cotonou, Benin)

KAMAU, Mr Henry Scientist, Training/LCA Initiative

Coordinator (Nairobi, Kenya)

OBEL-LAWSON, Ms Elizabeth Scientific Assistant (Nairobi, Kenya)

VODOUHE, Dr S. Raymond Coordinator for West and Central

Africa/Scientist, Genetic Diversity

(Cotonou, Benin)

AmericasRAMIREZ, Dr Marleni Regional Director (Cali, Colombia)

LASTRA, Dr Ramón Honorary Research Fellow

(Cali, Colombia)

BAENA, Ms Margarita Information, Public Awareness and

Training Specialist (Cali, Colombia)

Asia, Pacific and OceaniaSAJISE, Dr Percy Regional Director (Serdang, Malaysia)

ARORA, Dr R.K. Honorary Research Fellow

(New Delhi, India)

BAI, Dr Keyu Assistant Coordinator (Beijing, China)

BHAG MAL, Dr Senior Scientist, South Asia

Coordinator (New Delhi, India)

CHIN, Prof. H.F. Honorary Research Fellow

(Serdang, Malaysia)

KANNIAH, Ms Jayashree Scientific Assistant (Serdang, Malaysia)

LIM, Mr Eng Siang Honorary Research Fellow

(Serdang, Malaysia)

VELUTHATTIL, Administrative Officer

Mr Surendrakumar (New Delhi, India)

ZHANG, Mr Zongwen Associate Scientist, East Asia

Coordinator (Beijing, China)

Central and West Asia and North AfricaAYAD, Dr George Regional Director (Aleppo, Syria)

HADJ HASSAN, Dr Adnan Honorary Research Fellow

(Aleppo, Syria)

KHALIL, Mr Rami Media and Public Awareness Officer

(Aleppo, Syria)

MAMELLY, Mr Adib Finance and Administration Officer

(Aleppo, Syria)

EuropeTUROK, Dr Jozef Regional Director (Rome, Italy)

KOSKELA, Dr Jarkko Scientist, EUFORGEN Coordinator

(Rome, Italy)

LIPMAN, Ms Elinor Scientific Assistant (Montpellier,

France)

LUND, Dr Birgitte** Project Manager, AEGIS (Rome, Italy)

MAGGIONI, Mr Lorenzo Scientist, ECP/GR Coordinator

(Rome, Italy)

VINCETI, Dr Barbara*** Associate Scientist, Forest Biodiversity

(Rome, Italy)

GLOBAL CROP DIVERSITY TRUSTFOWLER Dr Cary* Executive Director, Global Crop

Diversity Trust (Rome, Italy)

LAIRD, Mr Julian Director of Development, Global Crop

Diversity Trust (Rome, Italy)

CLYNE, Ms Anne Finance Officer (Rome, Italy)

LALIBERTÉ, Ms Brigitte Scientist, Global Crop Diversity Trust

(Rome, Italy)

OTHER HOSTED STAFFASSAF, Ms Jenin* Programme Officer, ICT-KM

(Rome, Italy)

HENSON-APOLLONIO, Senior Scientist, Project Manager,

Dr Victoria Central Advisory Service on Intellectual

Property (CAS-IP) (Rome, Italy)

IZAC, Dr Anne-Marie* Chief Alliance Officer (Rome, Italy)

PORCARI, Ms Enrica Chief Information Officer, ICT-KM

Programme Leader (Rome, Italy)

WILDE, Ms Vicki* Gender & Diversity Program Leader

(Rome, Italy)

* Joined during 2006** Left during 2006*** Changed/moved position during 2006

Professionalstaff

CreditsText: Jeremy Cherfas Editors: Paul Neate and Thor Lawrence Design and layout: Patrizia Tazza Cover illustration: Greg Morgan Printing:

2006 Annual Report

CitationBioversity International. 2007. Annual Report 2006. Bioversity International, Rome, Italy.ISBN 978-92-9043-761-1

Bioversity International, Via dei Tre Denari 472/a, 00057 Maccarese, Rome, Italy

© Bioversity International, 2007