From bringing new deposits to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault; to supporting the 11 international genebanks of CGIAR; to organizing efforts in dozens of countries to collect and use crop wild relatives, the Crop Trust gained momentum in securing the foundation of food in 2017.
The 2017 report shows that international cooperation is alive and well when it comes to conserving the foundations of food and nutrition. The Crop Trust will be putting even more effort into this mission in the year ahead.
“The Crop Trust has a single job to do: safeguard one of the world’s most important natural resources, seeds,” says Marie Haga, executive director of Crop Trust. “Without these, we quite simply can’t secure enough nutritious food for future generations.”
In 2017, the Crop Trust:
- Added 64,403 new crop varieties to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault
- Collected 1,201 crop wild relatives from 18 different countries
- Provided $36,757,143 in grants to preserve crop diversity globally
- Conserved 774,000 accessions in international collections
- Updated 2,907,006 accessions records in Genesys
- Distributed 72,000 accessions from international collections of crop diversity
- Delivered samples to 98 countries
“The 2017 Annual Report shows that the Crop Trust is making good progress in ensuring we have a firm foundation for this work,” Haga says. “We’re helping to develop a rational global system for the conservation and use of crop diversity – both technically and financially. We know that our goal to safeguard crop diversity forever can be achieved.”
For more information from the Crop Trust 2017 Annual Report or to download the full report, visit https://report.croptrust.org/2017/.
