Hundreds of Local African Rice Varieties Deposited In Svalbard Global Seed Vault

Rice varieties were collected under project funded by International Treaty

Svalbard, Norway (April 6, 2021) – Two hundred of the 324 types of rice varieties deposited in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault last month were collected as part of a project funded in Mali by the Benefit-sharing Fund (BSF) of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The seeds travelled all the way from Mali to the Global Seed Vault located about 1000 kilometres from the North Pole.

“The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is an excellent global facility that is crucial for saving our accessions and avoiding genetic erosion,” said Amadou Sibide, Head of the Institut d’Economie Rurale (IER) of Mali.

“It is vital for the future of humanity that we conserve the biological diversity of our food crops and forages,” said Kent Nnadozie, Secretary of the International Treaty, which provides the international legal framework under which the Global Seed Vault operates. This includes the assurance that material deposited in the Seed Vault remains the sovereign property of those making the deposit.

The deposit of the seeds in the Global Seed Vault provides a safety backup of these local Malian rice varieties, many of which are in danger of disappearing due to a number of factors, especially climate-related threats and pest infestations.

“We are witnessing the gradual extinction of local varieties in the field and in local seed reserves, because of heat streaks, rat attacks and pest infestations,” said the coordinator of the BSF funded project in Mali, Jean Rodrigue Sangaré.

“We are very pleased that the Benefit-sharing Fund was able to support the collection of 266 rice varieties, particularly of those unique varieties that might otherwise have been lost altogether,” said Secretary Nnadozie. “It is also very important that these local varieties are now being conserved for future generations in the Global Seed Vault,” he said.

“As part of the Benefit-sharing Fund project, we have duplicated the collected accessions in freezers in our national genebank; however, power cuts pose a serious risk to the long-term conservation of these seeds,” project coordinator Sangaré explained. “In addition, political instability in the country and threats of armed groups also pose risks to the conservation of the collected seed accessions,” he added. The deposit of the rice varieties in the Global Seed Vault will ensure the safe conservation and survival of these varieties.

Mali, a major centre of diversity and domestication in Africa, has a great genetic diversity of local and traditional varieties of the marsh plant. The BSF supported project involved in this collection of rice varieties works with local producers and communities in four regions of Mali to preserve this precious genetic heritage for future use in breeding programs. The project, which is being implemented by the IER in Mali, also aims to increase rice producers’ access to resilient and farmers’ preferred rice varieties.

The266 accessions of rice were collected as part of the BSF project from 69 villages in four regions of the country. Rice producers from these areas shared through surveys that many of these varieties are late maturing. Farmers are reluctant to cultivate these due to the increasingly unpredictable weather patterns. On the other hand, some of the varieties are tolerant to drought and submersion, making them resilient both during drier seasons and during heavy rainfall.

“The International Treaty provides a vital bridge that connects the smallest community level initiative to the largest global level systems, as evidenced by the collection of rice varieties in the fields of Mali that have now been deposited for safekeeping in the Global Seed Vault in Norway,” Secretary Nnadozie said.

This BSF project involves more than 1000 people, including small-scale farmers, researchers and plant breeders, working together to gather information, collect the varieties and evaluating them for characteristics such as drought tolerance. The project is still ongoing, and includes the molecular characterization of the collected varieties, mapping their genetic diversity, selecting a set of varieties to be multiplied and distributed in different agro-ecological settings for further adaptation. In addition, some of the more promising varieties will be used as parents for the development of new high yielding and climate resilient varieties.

The project in Mali is one of 20 ongoing projects supported by the Fourth Cycle of the Benefit-sharing Fund. The Fund has benefitted over 1 million people in over 60 developing countries since its inception 10 years ago.

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