Sustainability & Environment (Agri-Food Systems) · Natural Resources & Biodiversity · also Plant Genetic Resources, Agricultural Biodiversity, Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives
The diversity of crops, livestock breeds, their wild relatives and farm-associated species, and how it is conserved and shared. Plant breeding itself sits in the crop sciences; this subject is about the conservation and governance of diversity.
In the exams: ICAR AICE subject 71 Unit 2 (agrobiodiversity, transgenics, PGR); ICAR AICE Plant Genetic Resources; UPSC CSE
Agrobiodiversity — the variety of crops and their varieties, livestock breeds, their wild relatives and the organisms that live with them on farms — is the genetic foundation of food security. Farmers created most of it over ten thousand years of domestication and selection; modern agriculture has used it to breed higher-yielding, more resistant crops and livestock, while at the same time narrowing the range of what is grown. Conserving this diversity, and deciding who may use it and who benefits, is both a scientific and a political task.
This subject covers the components of agrobiodiversity; centres of origin and diversity of crops; genetic erosion and its causes; crop wild relatives and landraces; exploration and germplasm collection; gene banks of seed, field, in vitro and cryopreserved material; on-farm conservation and community seed banks; animal genetic resources and breed conservation; environmental risk assessment and biosafety of transgenic crops; the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture; the Nagoya Protocol and access and benefit-sharing; and farmers' rights and plant variety protection. Plant breeding itself belongs to the crop sciences. General conservation biology and gene bank basics are in biodiversity-conservation; forest genetic resources in the forestry subject conservation-biology-genetic-resources; and treaty texts in environmental-law-policy.
Agrobiodiversity, transgenics and plant genetic resources are part of Unit 2 of ICAR AICE Environmental Sciences and of the separate ICAR examinations in plant genetic resources, and they appear regularly in the UPSC Civil Services examination. Figures on accessions, breeds and GM areas come from cited FAO and other reports and change as reports are updated.
Agricultural biodiversity (agrobiodiversity) is the variety and variability of animals, plants and micro-organisms that are used directly or indirectly for food and agriculture, including crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries. The CBD's programme of work on agricultural biodiversity (decision V/5, 2000) and FAO describe four components: genetic resources for food and agriculture (plant, animal, microbial and fungal, and aquatic genetic resources, including crop varieties, livestock breeds and their wild relatives); components that provide ecosystem services to agriculture (pollinators, natural enemies of pests, soil organisms, and the plants and habitats that support them); abiotic factors that shape agricultural biodiversity (climate, soils, water); and socio-economic and cultural dimensions (traditional knowledge, cultural values, institutions and practices). Ecologists also distinguish planned biodiversity — the crops and livestock a farmer chooses — from associated biodiversity, the organisms that colonise the farm because of those choices. The ecology of associated biodiversity and its services is covered in ecosystem-services-pollinators; this subject focuses on genetic resources and their governance.
FAO's State of the World's Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture (2019) found that of roughly 6000 plant species cultivated for food, fewer than 200 make substantial contributions to global food output, and only nine — sugar cane, maize, rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, oil-palm fruit, sugar beet and cassava — account for about two-thirds of total crop production by weight; rice, wheat and maize alone provide around half of the world's plant-derived calories. In livestock, about 40 species have been domesticated, but a handful (cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens) dominate, and international transboundary breeds such as Holstein-Friesian cattle have replaced many local breeds. Within crops, modern breeding produced uniform high-yielding varieties that raised production but replaced diverse landraces in many areas. This narrowing increases vulnerability to pests, diseases and climate shocks, and reduces the diversity of diets.
Agrobiodiversity provides the raw material for crop and livestock improvement: genes for disease and pest resistance, drought, heat and salinity tolerance, nutritional quality and adaptation to new conditions. It underpins resilience: diverse farming systems spread risk across species and varieties, as many smallholders do by growing mixtures of crops and varieties. It supports nutrition through diverse foods, including traditional vegetables, millets and pulses that are rich in micronutrients. And it carries cultural identity and knowledge, from rice varieties used in festivals to breeds adapted to specific pastoral systems. Climate change makes this diversity more valuable, because future farming will need traits not present in today's dominant varieties. Biodiversity concepts at all levels are covered in biodiversity-conservation, and forest genetic resources in the forestry subject conservation-biology-genetic-resources.
The Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov, from collecting expeditions across the world in the 1920s and 1930s, proposed that cultivated plants originated in a limited number of centres where their genetic diversity is greatest. In his mature scheme he recognised eight main centres: the Chinese centre (soybean, millets, many vegetables and fruits); the Indian or Hindustan centre (rice, pulses such as pigeonpea, black gram and green gram, eggplant, cucumber, mango, black pepper and many others), with an Indo-Malayan sub-centre (banana, coconut, sugar cane); the Central Asiatic centre (bread wheat diversity, pea, lentil, onion, apple); the Near Eastern centre (wheats, barley, rye, many fruits); the Mediterranean centre (olive, many vegetables and forages); the Abyssinian centre (coffee, sorghum, teff, finger millet and diversity of barley and durum wheat); the South Mexican and Central American centre (maize, common bean, cotton, cacao); and the South American centre (potato, tomato, groundnut, with sub-centres in Chiloé and Brazil–Paraguay for crops such as cassava and pineapple). Vavilov's method, the 'differential phytogeographic method', located centres by mapping the diversity of varieties.
Later research refined Vavilov's ideas. Harlan distinguished centres, where domestication was concentrated, from 'non-centres', large regions where domestication was diffuse, such as sub-Saharan Africa for sorghum and pearl millet. Zhukovsky proposed twelve mega-centres. It became clear that the centre of greatest present diversity is not always the centre of origin: secondary centres of diversity arise where crops were introduced and evolved under varied conditions, such as Ethiopia for barley and durum wheat and India for some introduced crops. Archaeology and genomics now date domestication: wheat, barley, lentil, pea, chickpea and flax in the Fertile Crescent around 10000–11000 years ago; rice and millets in China; maize from teosinte in southern Mexico around 9000 years ago; potato in the Andes; and sorghum and pearl millet in Africa. Domestication produced a 'domestication syndrome' of traits — non-shattering seeds, loss of seed dormancy, larger seeds or fruits, more compact growth and reduced bitterness or toxicity — through selection by early farmers.
Centres of origin and diversity remain priority areas for collecting and conserving crop wild relatives and landraces (chapters 4 and 5), because they hold the greatest variation. They also shape international law: the CBD's principle of national sovereignty over genetic resources and the ITPGRFA's multilateral system (chapter 10) respond to the fact that crop diversity originated mainly in developing countries while much of it is now held in gene banks and used by breeders elsewhere. Interdependence is high: most countries rely heavily on crops whose diversity originated elsewhere, which is the main justification for facilitated international exchange of plant genetic resources. India is itself both a centre of diversity (rice, pulses, cucurbits, spices, tropical fruits) and a major user of crops domesticated elsewhere (wheat, maize, potato, groundnut, chillies).
Genetic erosion is the loss of genetic diversity, including the loss of individual genes and combinations of genes such as those in locally adapted landraces and breeds. It can be measured as loss of varieties or breeds from an area, loss of alleles within populations, or reduced evenness when a few varieties dominate. An often-quoted FAO statement that about three-quarters of crop genetic diversity was lost in the twentieth century is based on limited evidence and should be cited with caution. Studies give a mixed picture: farm-level surveys in many regions document the disappearance of landraces as modern varieties spread, while a review of diversity in released varieties (van de Wouw and colleagues, 2010) found an initial narrowing in the 1960s followed by recovery as breeders used more diverse parents. Livestock evidence is clearer: FAO reports that many local breeds are at risk of extinction and that the risk status of a large share of breeds is unknown, with breeds lost every year.
Causes of genetic erosion in crops include replacement of landraces by modern varieties during and after the Green Revolution; agricultural intensification and monoculture; changes in markets and diets that favour a few commodities; seed laws and certification systems that favour uniform, registered varieties; land-use change, urbanisation and overgrazing that destroy habitats of crop wild relatives; climate change, which shifts suitable areas faster than wild populations can migrate; wars and civil unrest; and loss of the traditional knowledge needed to grow, process and use diverse crops. In livestock, causes include indiscriminate crossbreeding with exotic breeds, replacement by high-output international breeds, changes in production systems (mechanisation removing draught animals), disease outbreaks and culling, and lack of markets for products of local breeds.
Genetic uniformity creates vulnerability: when a crop over large areas carries the same susceptibility, a single pathogen can cause widespread loss. Classic examples include the Irish potato famine of 1845–1849, when late blight (Phytophthora infestans) devastated a potato crop with a narrow genetic base; the Bengal famine of 1943, to which brown spot of rice contributed; and the 1970 southern corn leaf blight epidemic in the United States, which spread because most hybrid maize carried the same Texas male-sterile cytoplasm, susceptible to a race of the fungus Bipolaris maydis. These episodes led to national germplasm programmes and to deliberate diversification of breeding. Modern risks include new strains of wheat stem rust, banana Fusarium wilt tropical race 4, which threatens the dominant Cavendish clone, and the spread of pests under climate change. Diversity in farmers' fields and gene banks is the insurance against such events.
Crop wild relatives (CWR) are wild plant taxa that are relatively closely related to crops and can contribute genes to them. Harlan and de Wet's (1971) gene pool concept classifies relatives by ease of gene transfer: the primary gene pool (GP1) includes the crop and taxa that cross readily with it, producing fertile hybrids; the secondary gene pool (GP2) includes species that can be crossed with some difficulty; and the tertiary gene pool (GP3) includes species from which genes can be transferred only with special techniques such as embryo rescue, bridging species or genetic engineering. CWR have contributed many valuable traits: resistance to grassy stunt virus in rice came from the wild species Oryza nivara and was used in the variety IR36; late blight resistance in potato from wild Solanum species; and the 'nobilisation' of sugar cane in India, crossing noble canes with wild Saccharum spontaneum, produced hardy, high-yielding varieties. CWR are threatened by habitat loss, overgrazing, herbicides and climate change, and a global gap analysis (Castañeda-Álvarez and colleagues, 2016) found that most CWR taxa are insufficiently represented in gene banks.
A landrace is a dynamic population of a cultivated plant that has a historical origin, a distinct identity and no formal crop improvement, and that is often genetically diverse, locally adapted and associated with traditional farming systems (Camacho Villa and colleagues, 2005). Landraces are maintained by farmers who save, select and exchange seed, so they continue to evolve under local conditions. India has thousands of rice landraces adapted to floods, salinity, drought and particular culinary uses, such as Pokkali, a salt-tolerant rice grown in coastal Kerala, Kalanamak, an aromatic rice of eastern Uttar Pradesh, and Navara, a medicinal rice of Kerala recognised by a geographical indication; pulses, millets, vegetables and spices show similar diversity. Landraces are often lower-yielding under high inputs but more reliable under stress, valued for taste and cultural use, and they are sources of genes for breeding — salinity tolerance genes from Pokkali, for instance, have been used in breeding programmes.
Conservation combines in-situ and ex-situ approaches. In-situ conservation of CWR uses genetic reserves — designated sites within or outside protected areas where target CWR populations are actively monitored and managed — and the inclusion of CWR in protected area management plans; national CWR inventories and conservation strategies identify priority taxa and sites. Landraces are conserved on farm by farmers (chapter 7), supported by markets, recognition and seed systems. Ex-situ collections in gene banks (chapter 6) provide security and access for breeders. Because CWR and landraces are most diverse in centres of origin and diversity, international cooperation and benefit sharing (chapters 10 and 11) are integral to their conservation. Genomic tools now allow researchers to scan CWR for useful alleles and to introduce them into crops more efficiently, which increases their value and the urgency of conserving them.
Germplasm collection gathers samples of crops, landraces and wild relatives for conservation and use. Planning begins with defining target taxa and regions, using gap analysis of existing collections (what is missing, from where) and eco-geographic surveys that compile information on taxonomy, distribution, ecology and diversity from herbarium records, literature and earlier collections. Timing must match seed maturity, which differs among species and altitudes. Collectors need permits from national authorities, prior informed consent of communities and landowners and, where relevant, agreements on benefit sharing under national law and the Nagoya Protocol or ITPGRFA (chapters 10 and 11), as well as phytosanitary certificates for movement of material. Teams combine botanists, local guides and farmers, whose knowledge of varieties, uses and locations is essential.
Sampling aims to capture as much genetic diversity as possible with manageable effort. Marshall and Brown's widely used strategy recommends sampling many populations across the range of environments and, within each population, about 50 to 100 randomly chosen individuals, enough to capture with high probability all alleles occurring at frequencies above about 5 %. The probability of including at least one copy of an allele of frequency p in a random sample of n gametes is 1 − (1 − p)^n: with p = 0.05, about 58.4 gametes give a 95 % chance, and 59 give 95 %. Rare, localised alleles require sampling more populations rather than more plants per population. Collectors may take bulk samples or keep seeds from each mother plant separate; for clonal crops they collect vegetative material such as tubers, cuttings or suckers; and for recalcitrant-seeded species they may collect embryos or tissue for in vitro culture.
Each sample is recorded with passport data, following internationally agreed multi-crop passport descriptors: institute and accession number, collecting number, taxon names, local and common names, collecting date, country and site with geographic coordinates and elevation, the biological status of the sample (wild, weedy, landrace, breeding material, improved variety), the collecting source (wild habitat, farm field, market, home garden), and notes on uses and farmer knowledge. Herbarium vouchers and photographs confirm identity. Good documentation makes collections usable, allows later gap analysis and traceability for benefit sharing, and links samples to environmental data so that breeders can search for adaptation to, for example, drought or heat (focused identification of germplasm strategies). India's National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources has carried out collecting missions across the country for decades, building one of the world's largest national collections.
About 7 million accessions of plant genetic resources are held in roughly 1750 gene banks worldwide, according to FAO's second report on the State of the World's Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2010), with a large share held by national gene banks and the CGIAR centres, whose international collections are placed under the ITPGRFA. India's National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) in New Delhi maintains the National Gene Bank, one of the largest in the world with several hundred thousand accessions. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, opened in 2008 in Norway and supported by the Crop Trust, stores safety duplicates of seed samples from gene banks around the world. Gene bank methods depend on the biology of the material (biodiversity-conservation chapter 10 introduces them; here they are treated in more depth).
Orthodox seeds, which tolerate drying and freezing, are stored in seed gene banks. FAO's Genebank Standards (2014) recommend drying seeds in an environment of 10–25 % relative humidity at 5–20 °C, sealing them in moisture-proof containers, and storing base collections at about −18 °C for long-term conservation, with active collections for distribution kept at around 5–10 °C; recommended accession sizes are at least about 1500 viable seeds for self-pollinating species and 3000 for cross-pollinating ones; viability is tested at intervals and accessions are regenerated when viability falls below 85 % of initial viability. Regeneration must avoid genetic drift and contamination by using adequate population sizes and isolation for out-crossing species. Field gene banks maintain living plants of clonally propagated crops (banana, potato, cassava, sugar cane, fruit trees) and species with recalcitrant seeds (mango, cocoa, coconut, rubber); they are expensive and exposed to pests, disease and weather. In vitro collections keep plantlets on artificial media under slow-growth conditions (reduced temperature, osmotic agents, growth retardants), extending subculture intervals to a year or more.
Cryopreservation stores material in liquid nitrogen at −196 °C, where metabolism effectively stops, allowing very long-term storage of shoot tips, embryos, embryonic axes, pollen and dormant buds; techniques such as vitrification (with cryoprotective solutions) and encapsulation-dehydration prevent damaging ice formation. It is the main long-term option for clonal and recalcitrant species, and is used routinely for livestock semen and embryos (chapter 8). Collection management also includes characterisation and evaluation (recording morphological, agronomic and molecular traits), documentation and information systems, distribution to users, and safety duplication in another gene bank. Large collections can be made manageable through core collections — subsets of about 10 % of accessions chosen to represent, with minimum repetition, most of the genetic diversity (often about 70 % of alleles, following Brown, 1989) — which are evaluated intensively. Genomic characterisation of whole collections increasingly helps breeders find useful variation.
On-farm conservation is the continued cultivation and management of a diverse set of crop populations by farmers in the agroecosystems where they evolved. Unlike gene banks, which freeze diversity at the time of collection, on-farm conservation keeps crops evolving with changing climate, pests and farmer needs, maintains the knowledge and cultural practices associated with them, and supports livelihoods. It is complementary to ex-situ conservation: gene banks provide security and access; farmers provide dynamic adaptation. Farmers maintain diversity for many reasons — risk reduction in variable environments, different uses (food, fodder, ritual, medicine), taste and cooking quality, and adaptation to marginal land — and their decisions about which varieties to grow determine what survives.
Practical approaches include diversity fairs and seed exchanges, where farmers display and exchange varieties; community seed banks, which store and lend seed of local varieties and help farmers recover after disasters; participatory plant breeding and participatory varietal selection, in which farmers and breeders select together from diverse material, improving local varieties while keeping diversity; market development for landrace products such as aromatic rices, millets and traditional vegetables, sometimes with geographical indications; recognition and rewards for custodian farmers; and policy support through seed laws that allow farmers' varieties to be registered and traded. Community seed banks have spread in many countries, including Nepal, Ethiopia, Brazil and India. The FAO Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems programme recognises landscapes where traditional agrobiodiversity persists, such as the Koraput system in Odisha, a region rich in rice landraces and millets. India's Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Authority gives Plant Genome Saviour Community awards and recognitions to communities and farmers conserving genetic resources.
Diversity on farms is assessed with the same tools used for species diversity, applied to varieties: richness (the number of varieties grown in a village or household), evenness (how equally area is shared among them) and indices such as Simpson's or Shannon's computed on the area share of each variety. Four-cell analysis, a participatory tool, classifies varieties by area (large or small) and number of households growing them (many or few), identifying common, rare and threatened varieties. Changes over time reveal genetic erosion or recovery. A village where one modern variety occupies 80 % of the rice area and four landraces share the rest has much lower evenness than one with five varieties at 20 % each, even though richness is the same. Molecular markers can confirm whether varieties with different names are genetically distinct, since farmers' names sometimes group different types or split similar ones.
Animal genetic resources for food and agriculture comprise the breeds of domesticated species — cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, camels, yaks, poultry and others — and their wild relatives. FAO's Domestic Animal Diversity Information System records thousands of breeds; FAO's reports have found that a substantial share of local breeds are at risk of extinction, while the risk status of many others is unknown because population data are lacking. Breed risk categories used by FAO depend on the number of breeding females and males and on population trend, with thresholds of roughly 100 breeding females marking 'critical' and about 1000 'endangered' status. Local breeds are often adapted to heat, disease, poor feed, water scarcity and particular production systems: India's zebu cattle breeds such as Gir, Sahiwal, Red Sindhi and Tharparkar are heat-tolerant and resistant to ticks; the Murrah buffalo is a major dairy breed; the Kadaknath chicken of Madhya Pradesh has a geographical indication; and small breeds such as Vechur cattle of Kerala have been rescued from near extinction. India's ICAR-National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (Karnal) registers breeds, and the number of registered indigenous breeds has grown to more than two hundred as characterisation continues.
The Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources, adopted at Interlaken in 2007, sets four strategic priority areas: characterisation, inventory and monitoring of trends and risks; sustainable use and development; conservation; and policies, institutions and capacity-building. Countries report on progress to FAO's Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Characterisation includes phenotypic description, population census and genomic analysis of distinctiveness and diversity. Sustainable use means making local breeds economically viable — through breeding programmes, value-added products, niche and geographical-indication markets, and payments for their environmental and cultural roles — since breeds that cannot pay their way are usually lost.
Conservation is in situ (keeping breeds in their production systems through breeding programmes, incentives and markets), ex situ in vivo (maintaining live animals on farms, institutes or parks outside their normal systems) and ex situ in vitro (cryopreserving semen, embryos, oocytes and somatic cells in liquid nitrogen in national gene banks). In vitro storage provides insurance and can reconstitute a breed by backcrossing, but cannot replace living populations that keep adapting. Genetic management of small breeds uses effective population size and inbreeding control (see biodiversity-conservation): a herd with 5 breeding bulls and 200 cows has Ne = 4 × 5 × 200 ÷ 205 ≈ 19.5, so inbreeding rises by about 2.6 % per generation unless more sires are used. India's Rashtriya Gokul Mission (2014) supports conservation and development of indigenous bovine breeds through breeding, semen and embryo technologies and breed centres. Indiscriminate crossbreeding with exotic breeds, while it raised milk yields in many areas, has diluted indigenous breeds and is a major cause of their erosion.
Genetically modified (transgenic) crops carry genes introduced by recombinant DNA techniques, such as Bt genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis that make plants toxic to certain insect pests, or genes conferring herbicide tolerance. Their environmental risk assessment, framed internationally by the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (see environmental-law-policy) and Codex guidelines for food safety, follows common principles: assessment case by case and step by step; a comparative approach that compares the GM crop with its conventional counterpart (the concept of substantial equivalence); problem formulation that identifies plausible pathways to harm and the protection goals at stake; and consideration of the receiving environment. Hazards considered include gene flow to wild relatives and landraces and possible increased weediness or invasiveness; effects on non-target organisms such as pollinators, natural enemies and soil organisms; evolution of resistance in target pests; changes in herbicide use and evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds; and effects on agrobiodiversity, particularly in centres of origin. Food and feed safety assessment considers toxicity, allergenicity and nutritional composition.
GM crops were grown on about 190 million hectares worldwide by 2019, mainly soybean, maize, cotton and canola in a few countries. Experience has shown both benefits — reduced insecticide use and yield protection in Bt cotton and maize — and management challenges. Resistance has evolved where refuge and other resistance-management requirements were not followed: in India, pink bollworm populations became resistant to Bt cotton toxins over the decade after the crop's approval in 2002, and in the Americas, weeds such as Palmer amaranth evolved resistance to glyphosate after repeated use on herbicide-tolerant crops. The high-dose/refuge strategy requires planting a share of non-Bt crop (a refuge) near Bt fields so that susceptible insects survive and mate with any resistant ones; for example, a 20 % refuge on a 5 ha farm means 1 ha of non-Bt crop. Gene flow from GM maize to Mexican landraces, in the centre of origin of maize, has been reported and has been controversial. Post-release monitoring, stewardship and integrated pest management are therefore part of responsible deployment.
In India, GM organisms are regulated under the Rules for the Manufacture, Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Micro-organisms, Genetically Engineered Organisms or Cells (1989), made under the Environment (Protection) Act. Institutional Biosafety Committees oversee research in institutions; the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation under the Department of Biotechnology approves confined research and field trials; and the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee under the environment ministry appraises proposals for environmental release. Bt cotton, approved in 2002, has been the only GM crop cultivated commercially; a moratorium was placed on Bt brinjal in 2010; and the GEAC approved the environmental release of the hybrid GM mustard DMH-11 in 2022, a decision challenged in the Supreme Court. In 2022 India exempted genome-edited plants without foreign DNA (site-directed nuclease 1 and 2 categories) from the 1989 Rules, and genome-edited rice varieties were released in 2025. The EU regulates GMOs under Directive 2001/18/EC with strict approval and labelling, and has been debating a separate regime for new genomic techniques; the United States regulates through several agencies under a coordinated framework. These differences affect trade and research.
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), adopted by the FAO Conference in November 2001 and in force since 2004, grew out of the non-binding International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources (1983), which had treated plant genetic resources as a 'heritage of mankind', and negotiations to harmonise it with the CBD's principle of national sovereignty. Its objectives are the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their use, in harmony with the CBD, for sustainable agriculture and food security. It recognises the enormous contribution of farmers to the conservation and development of these resources (Article 9 on farmers' rights) and asks parties to promote conservation, sustainable use and policies such as broadening the genetic base of crops.
The Treaty's centrepiece is the Multilateral System of Access and Benefit-sharing (MLS), which applies to 64 crops and forages listed in its Annex I — 35 food crops (including rice, wheat, maize, potato, sorghum, pearl millet, beans, chickpea, lentil, banana and many others) and 29 forage genera — chosen for their importance to food security and countries' interdependence. Some crops important to particular countries, such as soybean, groundnut, sugar cane and many vegetables, are outside Annex I. Material in the MLS held by parties and in international collections, including those of the CGIAR centres placed under Article 15, is exchanged using a Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA), which gives facilitated access for research, breeding and training for food and agriculture, without the need for case-by-case negotiation. Recipients may not claim intellectual property rights that limit access to the material in the form received.
Benefit sharing under the MLS includes exchange of information, access to and transfer of technology, capacity-building and the sharing of monetary benefits. When a recipient commercialises a product that incorporates material from the MLS and that is not available without restriction to others for further research and breeding (for example because it is patented), the SMTA requires payment to the Treaty's Benefit-sharing Fund of 1.1 % of gross sales minus 30 %, that is 0.77 % of sales; an alternative crop-based payment option exists. The Fund supports projects with farmers in developing countries that conserve and use crop diversity. Mandatory payments have been far lower than expected, and parties have been negotiating to enhance the system, including an expanded Annex I, subscription-based payments and the treatment of digital sequence information. The Treaty also established a Global Information System, and works with the Crop Trust, which raises an endowment for long-term funding of key collections. India is a party to the Treaty and its National Gene Bank participates in exchange.
Genetic resources outside the ITPGRFA's Multilateral System — including most wild species, many crops not in Annex I, livestock breeds, micro-organisms and associated traditional knowledge — fall under the CBD's bilateral approach to access and benefit-sharing, made operational by the Nagoya Protocol (2010, in force 2014; see environmental-law-policy). Users must obtain prior informed consent from the provider country (and from indigenous peoples and local communities where they hold rights over resources or knowledge) and agree mutually agreed terms on benefits. User countries must take measures to ensure that genetic resources used in their jurisdiction were accessed in line with providers' laws, with checkpoints and internationally recognised certificates of compliance. The Protocol recognises the specialised ABS instrument of the ITPGRFA for crops in its MLS and asks parties to consider the importance of genetic resources for food and agriculture and food security.
For agricultural research and breeding, which constantly exchanges and recombines material from many sources, bilateral ABS can be slow and costly: tracing the origin of every parent in a pedigree and negotiating terms with each provider is impractical, which is one reason the Multilateral System was created. Many countries' ABS laws therefore distinguish non-commercial research from commercial use, provide simplified procedures for food and agriculture, or exempt certain uses. India's Biological Diversity Act (see biodiversity-conservation and environmental-law-policy) regulates access by foreign entities through the National Biodiversity Authority and by Indian commercial users through State Biodiversity Boards, and its 2023 amendment eased requirements for cultivated medicinal plants and for codified traditional knowledge. Benefits in agriculture include shared research results, training, technology, joint breeding programmes and monetary payments, for example through licences of varieties or products derived from local resources.
Advances in genomics allow researchers to use digital sequence information (DSI) — genetic sequence data stored in public databases — without physical access to the original material, raising the question whether benefit-sharing obligations follow the data. After years of debate, CBD COP15 (2022) agreed to establish a multilateral mechanism for benefit-sharing from the use of DSI, and COP16 (Cali, 2024) launched the 'Cali Fund', to which large companies using DSI are expected to contribute — an indicative 1 % of profits or 0.1 % of revenue — with funds directed in part to indigenous peoples and local communities. Contributions are voluntary in practice and the mechanism's effectiveness remains to be seen. The ITPGRFA is negotiating how DSI relates to its own Multilateral System. For breeders and seed companies, DSI rules may affect the use of public genomic databases; for provider countries and communities, they are a way to share in benefits from the increasingly data-driven use of their genetic resources.
Plant breeders' rights (PBR) are a form of intellectual property that gives breeders exclusive rights over the commercial propagating material of new varieties for a limited period. The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) sets the framework through conventions of 1961, 1978 and 1991. To be protected, a variety must be new (not commercialised beyond set periods), distinct from other varieties of common knowledge, uniform and stable — the DUS criteria — and have a denomination. UPOV 1978 allowed farmers to save and reuse seed of protected varieties; UPOV 1991 strengthened breeders' rights, extending them to harvested material and to essentially derived varieties, and made the farm-saved seed exception optional and restricted. The WTO TRIPS Agreement (Article 27.3(b)) requires members to protect plant varieties by patents, an effective sui generis system, or a combination; many developing countries, including India, chose sui generis laws rather than joining UPOV 1991.
Farmers' rights recognise the past, present and future contributions of farmers in conserving, improving and making available plant genetic resources. Article 9 of the ITPGRFA leaves their realisation to national governments and lists measures including protection of traditional knowledge, the right to participate equitably in sharing benefits, the right to participate in national decision-making, and — subject to national law — rights to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (2018) also affirms a right to seeds. Implementation varies widely, and tensions between breeders' rights, seed regulations and farmers' seed systems remain a central policy debate, especially in countries where most seed is farmer-saved.
India's Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act 2001, administered by the PPV&FR Authority established in 2005, is a sui generis law that protects both breeders and farmers. It allows registration of new varieties, extant varieties (including those already notified under the Seeds Act), farmers' varieties and essentially derived varieties, using DUS testing. Protection lasts 18 years for trees and vines and 15 years for other crops (with shorter terms from notification for extant varieties). Farmers keep the right to save, use, sow, re-sow, exchange, share and sell their farm produce, including seed of protected varieties, except that they may not sell branded seed of a protected variety; they are protected against innocent infringement, may claim compensation if a registered variety fails to perform as claimed, and may register their own varieties. Benefit sharing from varieties developed using farmers' varieties is paid into a National Gene Fund, which also supports conservation and the Plant Genome Saviour awards. A widely reported 2019 dispute, in which a multinational food company sued potato farmers in Gujarat for growing a registered variety and later withdrew the suits, highlighted both the strength of the Act's farmers' rights and the gaps in awareness of them.
A student should be able to list the components of agrobiodiversity, name Vavilov's centres and the crops of the Hindustan centre, explain genetic erosion and genetic vulnerability with historical examples, define gene pools and landraces, design a collecting strategy and compute allele-capture probabilities, describe seed, field, in vitro and cryopreservation gene banks with FAO standards, explain on-farm conservation tools, describe AnGR status and conservation including effective population size, outline GM risk assessment and India's regulatory bodies, and explain the ITPGRFA, Nagoya and PPV&FR Act. These are frequently examined in ICAR and UPSC papers.
A gene bank curator, plant genetic resources scientist, seed systems officer or livestock breed conservation officer plans collecting missions and documentation, manages accessions, viability testing and regeneration, distributes germplasm under SMTAs, supports community seed banks and participatory breeding, characterises and registers breeds, operates semen and embryo banks, assists biosafety committees and field trial monitoring, and advises farmers on variety registration and rights. They must handle permits, ABS agreements and phytosanitary requirements correctly, and to explain to farmers what registration and benefit sharing mean for them in practice.
A national programme leader, director of a gene bank or breed bureau, or senior official in a seed or biotechnology regulator sets priorities for conservation and use, negotiates in ITPGRFA, CBD and FAO Commission meetings, oversees biosafety decisions, designs farmers' rights and variety protection policies, and secures long-term funding. They balance access for breeding with sovereignty and benefit sharing, and public research with private investment. They also decide how much to spend on collections that may not be used for decades, and defend those budgets against short-term priorities.
A professor or principal scientist works on genomics of crop diversity and wild relatives, domestication history, genetic erosion measurement, seed longevity and cryobiology, conservation genetics of breeds, gene flow and ecological risk of transgenic and genome-edited crops, and the governance of genetic resources including DSI. They contribute to FAO State of the World reports, advise governments and treaty bodies, supervise doctoral research and set examinations that test understanding of genetic principles and policy trade-offs, and train the curators and breeders who will manage collections next.
Plant breeding methods are left to crop science subjects. Global and national counts (accessions, gene banks, breeds, GM area) are approximate and dated; the third FAO report on plant genetic resources and newer breed status figures should be checked. Thresholds in FAO breed-risk categories are simplified. The legal status of GM mustard and of India's genome-edited crop rules, the outcome of ITPGRFA enhancement negotiations and the operation of the Cali Fund were evolving at the time of writing. Microbial, aquatic and forest genetic resources are not covered in depth, and the specific plant-variety disputes mentioned are summarised without legal detail.
Original practice questions written to the syllabus and pattern of the exams named in each question's examTags. They are not past papers and do not reproduce any board's questions. Every numerical answer was computed in a script. Counts and legal status (GM approvals, breed numbers, treaty rules) reflect the sources cited and change over time.
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