Community seed banks in China: achievements, challenges and prospects

The rich agrobiodiversity of China is under unprecedented threat, experiencing a dramatic loss of many valuable local varieties and wild relatives of main crops. The country's formal conservation system of ex situ genebanks faces serious challenges to address this loss. Community seed banks can play...

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Autores principales: Song, Xin, Guanqi Li, Vernooy, Ronnie, Song, Yiching
Formato: Journal Article
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: Frontiers Media 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10568/113645
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author Song, Xin
Guanqi Li
Vernooy, Ronnie
Song, Yiching
author_browse Guanqi Li
Song, Xin
Song, Yiching
Vernooy, Ronnie
author_facet Song, Xin
Guanqi Li
Vernooy, Ronnie
Song, Yiching
author_sort Song, Xin
collection Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (CGSpace)
description The rich agrobiodiversity of China is under unprecedented threat, experiencing a dramatic loss of many valuable local varieties and wild relatives of main crops. The country's formal conservation system of ex situ genebanks faces serious challenges to address this loss. Community seed banks can play a key role to complement the conservation activities of these genebanks and provide other important collective goods, such as evolutionary services, but although they have been around for some 35 years in various parts of the world, in China they have a much shorter history. In recent years though the number has increased to almost 30 in 2020, in particular due to the efforts of the China Farmers' Seed Network. The community seed banks in the country are very diverse in terms of functions and services, forms of management and institutional linkages. Compared to the most common functions of community seed banks in other countries, China is bringing an important design innovation through two new functions: adding value to seed and produce through innovative marketing strategies, and building regional and national seed system linkages and fostering collaboration. The review of community seed banking not only provides rich empirical evidence, but also makes an important contribution to theory. Building on the achievements of community seed banking in the last decade, there is scope to scale this kind of very valuable agrobiodiversity conservation approach through more effective uptake and support by relevant national policies.
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spelling CGSpace1136452025-11-11T18:54:30Z Community seed banks in China: achievements, challenges and prospects Song, Xin Guanqi Li Vernooy, Ronnie Song, Yiching gene banks conservation agriculture diversification community seed bank resilience seed systems banco de genes agricultura de conservación diversificación The rich agrobiodiversity of China is under unprecedented threat, experiencing a dramatic loss of many valuable local varieties and wild relatives of main crops. The country's formal conservation system of ex situ genebanks faces serious challenges to address this loss. Community seed banks can play a key role to complement the conservation activities of these genebanks and provide other important collective goods, such as evolutionary services, but although they have been around for some 35 years in various parts of the world, in China they have a much shorter history. In recent years though the number has increased to almost 30 in 2020, in particular due to the efforts of the China Farmers' Seed Network. The community seed banks in the country are very diverse in terms of functions and services, forms of management and institutional linkages. Compared to the most common functions of community seed banks in other countries, China is bringing an important design innovation through two new functions: adding value to seed and produce through innovative marketing strategies, and building regional and national seed system linkages and fostering collaboration. The review of community seed banking not only provides rich empirical evidence, but also makes an important contribution to theory. Building on the achievements of community seed banking in the last decade, there is scope to scale this kind of very valuable agrobiodiversity conservation approach through more effective uptake and support by relevant national policies. 2021-04-29 2021-05-06T08:42:05Z 2021-05-06T08:42:05Z Journal Article https://hdl.handle.net/10568/113645 en Open Access application/pdf Frontiers Media Song, X.; Li, G.; Vernooy, R.; Song, Y. (2021) Community seed banks in China: achievements, challenges and prospects. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 5: 630400. ISSN: 2571-581X
spellingShingle gene banks
conservation agriculture
diversification
community seed bank
resilience
seed systems
banco de genes
agricultura de conservación
diversificación
Song, Xin
Guanqi Li
Vernooy, Ronnie
Song, Yiching
Community seed banks in China: achievements, challenges and prospects
title Community seed banks in China: achievements, challenges and prospects
title_full Community seed banks in China: achievements, challenges and prospects
title_fullStr Community seed banks in China: achievements, challenges and prospects
title_full_unstemmed Community seed banks in China: achievements, challenges and prospects
title_short Community seed banks in China: achievements, challenges and prospects
title_sort community seed banks in china achievements challenges and prospects
topic gene banks
conservation agriculture
diversification
community seed bank
resilience
seed systems
banco de genes
agricultura de conservación
diversificación
url https://hdl.handle.net/10568/113645
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AT guanqili communityseedbanksinchinaachievementschallengesandprospects
AT vernooyronnie communityseedbanksinchinaachievementschallengesandprospects
AT songyiching communityseedbanksinchinaachievementschallengesandprospects