Agriculture germplasm resources: A tool of conserving diversity

Three major physical resources in the world comprise land, water and the biological diversity. Agricultural biodiversity is an important component of biodiversity, which has a more direct link to the well being and livelihood of mankind than other forms of bio¬diversity. In fact, it is one of our most fundamental and essential resources, one that has enabled farming systems to evolve since the birth of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Food plant and animal species have been collected, used, domesticated and improved through traditional sys¬tems of selection over many generations. The resulting diversity of genetic resources developed by early farmers now forms the basis on which modern high yielding and disease resistant varieties have been produced to feed the growing human population, expected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050. According to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), “agricultural biodiversity in¬cludes all components of biological diversity of relevance to food and agriculture, and all components of biological biodiversity that constitute agro-ecosystems: the variety and variability of animals, plants and micro-organisms, at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels, which are neces¬sary to sustain key functions of the agricultural ecosystem, its structure and processes”. The effective conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity is very important in ensuring sustainable increases in the productivity and produc¬tion of healthy food by and for mankind as well as contrib¬uting to increased resilience of agricultural ecosystems. Key words: Agricultural biodiversity, ecosystem, Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), domestication, human population, variability.