To Serve and Conserve

genebanks exploring ways to improve service to PGR users and effectiveness of PGR conservation

In April 2011, a European Plant Genetic Resources Conference will be held in Wageningen, The Netherlands.

This 3 day meeting is organised as the 20^th meeting of the EUCARPIA Section Genetic Resources, on the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of the Centre for Genetic Resources, The Netherlands (CGN).

Download the flyer.

Objective

The meeting is organised with the objective to explore ways to improve service to PGR users and effectiveness of PGR conservation.

The orientation of many genebanks worldwide is within their national genebank community paying too little attention to the users and to actors outside their community. This attitude seriously impaires international genebank collaboration and the utilization of their genetic resources. Therefore the time has come to change the orientation from within the local genebank to the rest of the world. Approaches of properly serving the users and of strengthening collaboration amongst genebanks and other actors will be explored. In this context the quality of the genebank operations plays a crucial role; users must be able to rely on genebanks in terms of availability, authenticity and seed quality of the PGR samples but also in terms of accessibility and reliability of the information supplied. Equally important is that the same elements apply to collaboration between genebanks, before genebanks can start sharing responsibilities, they have to be able to rely on each others quality and have access to each others documentation. Obviously this needs to be done in a transparent international regime of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS).

During the conference, approaches for increasing the service and operational quality will be presented and discussed. In a dialogue with the PGR users, it will be explored what the users expect from the genebanks and how genebanks can comply. Similarly, approaches to assure and improve the quality of genebank operations will be discussed.

Who should attend ?

The conference welcomes anyone involved in plant genetic resources (PGR) conservation and use. It is expected that there will be between 125 and 150 participants, largely staff of European genebanks, but also PGR users, i.e., scientists and breeders, and any other interested scientist, policy maker or student.

These meetings have proved to provide an excellent opportunity to catch up with the state-of-the-art in the genebanking world, during the regular program, but also in interaction with the other participants in the margins of the program and during the social events.

Format

• three half days with plenary presentations: one 30 minutes keynote to introduce the topic of that half day, and five 20 minutes presentations around that topic
• two half-days with discussions in smaller groups (max 20 persons) and reports in plenary
• permanent poster presentation - posters will be introduced by the presenter in plenary with 60 second presentations
• a half-day excursion