ABSTRACT

The threat of genetic erosion to the future of crop breeding and agriculture itself wasn't recognised until just a few decades ago. European scientists began sensing the problem at the end of the last century, when they realised that farmers' landraces constituted a precious basis for future breeding. The imperative for them was to collect these seeds and get to work on them. Later, in the 1960s, the world at large woke up to the fact that the uniform seeds ofthe Green Revolution were irreversibly replacing the incredible and unique diversity of local crops where that diversity was strongest, where it originated: in farmers' fields throughout the Third World. This time the imperative was not just to collect what was on its road to extinction but to conserve it indefinitely as a source of options for tomorrow's needs.