ABSTRACT
Collaboration between organizations and institutions in different countries has always been a characteristic of work on the conservation and use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA). This collaboration has ranged from informal efforts between individual researchers, conservation workers and plant breeders in different countries to more formal attempts to establish collaborative arrangements and develop activities and institutions able to provide a regional or global oversight or support activities that require the participation of different countries. The importance of transnational collaboration on PGRFA to the development and maintenance of national agricultural production and food security has been clearly demonstrated (Palacios, 1998), and the arguments for ensuring that mechanisms are needed that facilitate collaboration in regard to conservation and use are well known (Cooper et al., 1994). Collaboration between institutes and organizations around the world increases the effectiveness of conservation since the work can be shared between gene banks and conservation agencies in different countries. Such cooperation enables countries to focus conservation efforts on what they consider to be their own most important priorities with respect to the conserved species, populations and accessions, knowing that other countries complement their efforts. Collaboration can also help improve the security of conservation through planned duplication of collections and cooperation (most often through regional or crop networks) on the various activities associated with conservation (for example, identification of species, populations and varieties for conservation, collection of materials, storage, regeneration and distribution). International collaboration further contributes to the availability and accessibility of information and of conserved materials and facilitates the use of such materials in research, breeding or, more directly, by other users. Increasingly, varieties of major crops involve the use of parental material from several different countries – for example, the pedigree of the Veery wheats distributed by the International Centre for Maize and Wheat Improvement includes varieties or lines from over 15 countries (Fowler and Hodgkin, 2004).
