ABSTRACT
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) was adopted at the Thirty-first Session of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Conference in Rome, 3 November 2001. Its stated objectives are the conservation and sustainable use of these resources, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from their use in harmony with the CBD for sustainable agriculture and food security. The forerunner to the ITPGRFA was the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources (IU), adopted at the Twenty-second Session of the FAO Conference in Rome in 1983. In 1996, the Global Plan of Action for the Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (GPA) were adopted by the International Technical Conference on Plant Genetic Resources, in Leipzig, Germany, and were endorsed by 150 countries. This chapter distinguishes between the components in the historical analysis, with special focus on the IU and the ITPGRFA, and less on the GPA.
