Capacity and Resource Development
Ensuring that plant diversity contributes fully to increasing food and nutrition security starts with and depends on effective genebanks — genebanks doing the right thing in the right way at the right time. Genebanks need to have the right equipment, up-to-date processes and procedures and well-trained staff. That is what this area of work aims to provide — the foundations for everything that follows in the project.
The BOLD project is working with 15 national genebanks in Africa, Asia and Latin America to strengthen their capacity to manage, document, conserve and back up the crop diversity that they hold. Building on this, the project is helping the genebanks make their collections available to farmers, plant breeders and others who can put them to use in productive, resilient production systems that enhance food and nutrition security.
The project will achieve this by:
- Upgrading facilities and equipment
- Training staff on genebank operations and relevant policies
- Improving documentation and genebank data management
- Implementing a quality management system
These activities will help ensure that the crop diversity held by the genebanks are securely conserved in long- and medium-term storage facilities, properly safety duplicated, adequately documented and available for use under the appropriate policy conditions in sufficient quantity and high quality.
By establishing user groups and involving farmers and other actors in the seed systems, the project will help partner genebanks increase the diversity of varietal options available to farmers. This effort complements the work on making new diversity available and seed systems.
The Emergency Reserve Fund is part of this work package.
