Conference detail

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