Diversity in the food chain

It will also facilitate co-ordination in the field of international undertakings on genetic resources. The budget allocated to this programme is €10 million.

"Biological and genetic diversity in agriculture is essential for the sustainable development of agricultural production and of rural areas. This new Community programme will contribute to maintaining this biological diversity and to improving the quality of our agricultural products as well as promoting the diversification in rural areas and the reduction of inputs and agricultural production costs",​ said Franz Fischler, Commissioner for agriculture, rural development and fisheries. The EU has long been keen to promote diversification in the food chain. When the genetic diversity of crops and breeds diminishes and genes are lost, this can lead to a higher susceptibility to diseases and stress factors. It can also lead to a loss of genes which allow the crop or breed to adapt itself to specific local growth conditions.

Fischler believes that sustainable, low input agriculture needs crops and breeds with a capacity to adapt themselves to local climatic and soil conditions, with variation in resistances and tolerances against pests. In other words, sustainable agriculture needs a highly diverse gene pool and if agriculture is to produce high added value produce, it needs genes with good organoleptic characteristics and optimal transformation quality.

It is for these reasons that the EU has launched this programme to preserve genetic resources in agriculture.

The new EU initiative will promote the conservation, characterisation, collection and utilisation of plant, animal and microbial genetic resources in agriculture, including on-farm management of genetic resources. It would foster a wider coverage of plant and animal diversity and would also complement the work undertaken in the Member States in this field. It would in particular support the development of new trans-border initiatives and prevent duplication of activities.

The programme will consist of targeted actions, concerted actions and accompanying actions. An example of a targeted action would be the development of decentralised, permanent and widely accessible web-based inventories collecting knowledge on the genetic resources of crops and breeds available in the EU, their origins and their characteristics. This information could be made available at European and international level.

Fischler says that smaller accompanying actions would facilitate the exchange of thematic issues for the purpose of improving co-ordination functions and programmes and the organisation of seminars, technical conferences, meetings with NGOs and other relevant stakeholders, training courses and the preparation of technical reports. The proposal calls for an effective information exchange and close co-ordination between the EU's main actors in this field and with the relevant organisations throughout the world.