Indicator 2.5.1 Number of plant and animal genetic resources for food and agriculture secured in either medium- or long-term conservation facilities

Indicator 2.5.1: Number of (a) plant and (b) animal genetic resources for food and agriculture secured in either medium- or long-term conservation facilities

Target 2.5: By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Definition:

The conservation of plant and animal genetic resources for food and agriculture (GRFA) in medium- or long-term conservation facilities (ex situ in vito, i.e. in genebanks) represents a trusted means of conserving genetic resources worldwide.

The measure of trends in ex situ conserved materials provides a partial assessment of the extent to which we are managing to maintain genetic diversity available for future use and thus protected from any permanent loss of genetic diversity which may occur in the natural habitat, i.e. in situ/on-farm.

The two components of the indicator 2.5.1, plant (a) and animal (b) GRFA, are separately counted.

Animal genetic resources

The animal component is calculated as the number of local (i.e. being reported to exist only in one country) and transboundary (i.e. being reported to exist in more than one country) breeds with material stored within a genebank collection with an amount of genetic material which is required to reconstitute the breed in case of extinction (further information on “sufficient material stored to reconstitute a breed” can be found in the Guidelines on Cryoconservation of Animal Genetic Resources, FAO, 2012, accessible at http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/i3017e/i3017e00.htm). The guidelines have been endorsed by the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture at its Thirteenth Regular Session (http://www.fao.org/docrep/meeting/024/mc192e.pdf).

Concepts:

Animal genetic resources

Breed: A breed is either a sub-specific group of domestic livestock with definable and identifiable external characteristics that enable it to be separated by visual appraisal from other similarly defined groups within the same species, or a group for which geographical and/or cultural separation from phenotypically similar groups has led to acceptance of its separate identity.

Medium- or long-term conservation facilities: Biological diversity is often conserved ex situ, outside its natural habitat, in facilities called genebanks. In the case of domestic animal diversity, ex situ conservation includes both the maintenance of live animals (in vivo) e.g. in zoos and cryoconservation (in vitro).

Cryoconservation is the collection and deep-freezing of semen, ova, embryos or tissues for potential future use in breeding or regenerating animals.

The indicator covers materials under ex situ in vitro conservation.

Number of local breeds and number of transboundary breeds

Animal genetic resources

National Coordinators for Management of Animal Genetic Resources, nominated by their respective government, provide data to the Domestic Animal Diversity Information System (DAD-IS) (http://dad.fao.org/). DAD-IS allows countries the storage of data on animal genetic resources being secured in genebank facilities as needed for the indicator.

The officially nominated National Focal Points / National Coordinators. For information by country see for animal genetic resources http://www.fao.org/dad-is/national-coordinators/en/.

Animal genetic resources

Information on cryo-conserved material in the Domestic Animal Diversity Information System DAD-IS needs to be updated on a regular base.

Animal genetic resources

For the animal component the indicator is calculated as the number of local breeds and transboundary breeds with enough genetic material stored within genebank collections allowing to reconstitute the breed in case of extinction (based on the Guidelines on Cryoconservation of animal genetic resources, FAO, 2012, http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/i3017e/i3017e00.htm). Numbers for local and transboundary breeds are presented separately. To decide whether the material stored is sufficient on regional or global levels the numbers provided to DAD-IS for each type of material (e.g. semen samples, embryos, somatic cells) conserved within the framework of a cryconservation programme, as well as the number of the respective male and female donor animals, must be summed across the countries belonging to the respective region of interest.

2024-03-28

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Indicator 2.5.1a on plant genetic resources and 2.5.2 on animal genetic resources

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