Healing Wounds

Healing Wounds


	Safeguarding and Restoring Agrobiodiversity

IRRI held 55 Cambodian rice varieties in its gene bank in 1972. By fortunate coincidence, IRRI collected another 756 accessions in 1973, just as the Khmer Rouge era was getting underway. The CIAP (Cambodia-IRRI-Australia Project) team recognized the agrobiodiversity crisis that the Khmer Rouge had perpetrated, and worked with the Department of Agronomy, Provincial Agriculture Offices and NGOs to rescue traditional varieties as soon as the security situation allowed. A total of 3846 traditional varieties were collected during the 1989-97 CIAP period (Javier et al. 1999). In addition, 1097 accessions of wild rice (Oryza nivara and O. rufipogon) and their hybrids and progenies with cultivated rice were collected. These precious collections have been repatriated to Cambodia, and will benefit the entire rice-consuming world over time.

A 2001 review investigated the biodiversity impacts of the IRRI-led CIAP Cambodia rehabilitation project (Urwin and Wrigley 2001). In the course of the rebuilding effort, CIAP tapped IRRI's gene bank to restore what native biodiversity it could.

CIAP released a number of varieties particularly suited to the country's different rice-growing environments, which range from the well-drained uplands through various levels of water depth, controlled and uncontrolled, and including deepwater ecosystems. Over its course of work, CIAP recommended 32 different rice varieties for formal seed multiplication and use by Cambodian farmers. Twelve of those were traditional varieties that had been recovered from IRRI's gene bank (Javier 1997).

CIAP promoted low-impact cultivation methods such as integrated nutrient management and integrated pest management (Urwin and Wrigley 2001). These approaches are also likely to have reduced the damage to biodiversity that would otherwise have occurred had less careful policies been followed in the restoration of rice production. For example, low rates of safer pesticides, applied on a needs-only basis help prevent the loss of valuable predatory insects that control insect pest populations.

Safeguarding West Africa's rice

WARDA has helped countries rebuild their rice agrobiodiversity across Africa. Even low-intensity conflict probably had major effects on rice agrobiodiversity, because it altered social cooperation including seed systems (Richards and Ruivenkamp 1997). WARDA, whose gene bank holds 28,000 rice accessions, recognizes the chronic nature of this threat and takes a `preventive germplasm collection' approach. Data characterizing the collection sites is compiled in a geographical information systems (GIS) database to aid in restoring traditional varieties to their locations of origin as soon as possible.

From 1994 to 2002, about 10,000 rice varieties were restored in West Africa (Liberia and Sierra Leone). In 2002, over 3500 rice varieties/lines were sent to Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Rwanda. In Cote d'Ivoire, about a thousand cultivars were collected in the year 2000 in an area that was later engulfed in civil war.


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Produced by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and published by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), 2005