International genebank keeps rice bowls full in Asia

LOS BAÑOS, Philippines (AFP) – Asia’s insurance for food security lies in a paradoxical bank which allows withdrawals without a mandatory deposit.

But parallels between the International Rice Genebank, nestled southeast of the Philippine capital Manila, and banks of the financial kind are inescapable.

The genebank holds in trust the world’s most comprehensive collection of rice genetic resources – about 80,000 samples of traditional varieties of cultivated rice and wild species – on behalf of more than 100 countries, said Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton, the bank’s head.

Traditional varieties have been developed by farmers over thousands of years of agriculture. "We aim to protect traditional varieties of rice so that they can be used to help poor rice farmers throughout the world," Hamilton told AFP.

With the staggering wealth of genetic diversity, the benevolent bank grows and multiplies the rice seeds and shares the priceless resource with any country.

"We are open to any nation, including those who do not deposit their traditional varieties with us, provided they agree not to infringe the sovereign rights of nations over their biodiversity," Hamilton said.

"Countries taking seeds of rice varieties which are not theirs have to sign a legal agreement that they will not attempt to seek intellectual property protection on that material," he said.

Asia, the most populous continent, is benefiting most from the bank’s efforts to protect and conserve the rice industry’s biodiversity.

Ninety percent of the world’s rice is grown and consumed in the region.

Rice also provides up to 80 percent of daily calorie intake in Asia and is also the single most important source of employment and income for rural people.

The rice genebank, which marked its 25th year of operation this month, is housed at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at the university town of Los Baños, 60 kilometers (40 miles) from Manila.

The IRRI is the world’s top rice research and training center.

IRRI spokesman Duncan Macintosh said the availability of traditional rice varieties – and the wild relatives of rice – to serve as parents was crucial to help the institute improve rice varieties to meet increasing demand for cereal.

Today, rice feeds nearly three billion people or almost half the world’s population. By 2015, that number will shoot up to 4.6 billion people, Macintosh said.

Duncan also said that based on IRRI research, preserved traditional rice varieties can be used not only to increase farmers’ incomes but to control pests and diseases.

The research has mostly involved the planting of traditional rice varieties either alongside, or instead of, the modern, high-yielding rice varieties normally grown by many of the world’s estimated 200 million rice farmers.

But in the rice fields, the diversity of rice varieties is shrinking these days because farmers are replacing traditional varieties with modern high-yielding ones or due to rapid development.

Over at the fire-and-earthquake-resistant gene bank, Hamilton and his staff conserve the diversity of the rice gene pool and make seeds available to scientists around the globe.

The seeds are kept at between two and four degrees centigrade in vacuum-sealed aluminium cans or heat-sealed aluminium foil packets for immediate exchange and at minus 20 degrees centigrade for long-term storage.

A back-up set of the collection is stored in sealed boxes in the United States. "They are kept under ‘blackbox’ conditions merely as a protection in emergencies," said Hamilton, who was in charge of the United Kingdom’s forage gene bank before taking up the new job in August 2002.

Since 1986, some 250,000 seed samples have been distributed to researchers by the International Rice Genebank, many of which were restored to their countries of origin.

Hamilton cites the examples of war-ravaged Cambodia and Afghanistan to stress the point.

During prolonged war and internal conflict in Cambodia more than 20 years ago, farmers could not grow deepwater rice. When they finally could, the seeds were gone.

With samples safely conserved at the gene bank, the farmers are once again growing their rice varieties, he said.

Today not only Cambodia’s rice industry is back on its feet, it is also a rice exporter.

"We plan to do the same for war-ravaged Afghanistan," Hamilton said. "We are in the process of trying to return Afghanistan varieties and to give them improved varieties as well to reestablish native Afghan biodiversity," he said.