Genetic resources are national assets of each country. Based on the Convention on Biological Diversity in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, genetic resources were no longer the world’s wealth. Everyone cannot explore and demand ownership rights or even use genetic resources freely. In line with the steps to realize the Sustainable Development Goals, these genetic resources need to be kept either in-situ or ex-situ way and if genetic resources are orthodox seeds, then genetic resources can be stored in the form of genetic banks.
As the development of intensive agriculture, local varieties of vegetables had been replaced by new high-yielding varieties. Growing areas of local varieties and their relatives have already started to shift to hard-to-reach marginal areas. In contrast, local varieties and the relatives often have the characteristics of future superior cultivar programs, therefore we must be able to save them. The genetic resources management of orthodox seed in the genetic bank is a collaboration among institutions in the form of a consortium and can be used widely to maintain the availability of genetic resources in the form of accession from various agricultural commodities. In term of improving the quality of vegetables, Indonesia needs genetic resources both global community to obtain superior traits as needed.
To realize the ideals of national vegetable germplasm conservation through sustainable management of genetic resources, PT Eastwest Seed Indonesia in collaboration with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) built a tropical vegetable genetic bank at the Agrotechnology Innovation Center, Universitas Gadjah Mada (AIC-UGM). The bank is expected to play a vital role as the center of national tropical vegetable genetic resource management that can facilitate the demand and exchange of vegetable genetic resources for the benefit of the global community, especially Indonesia both by government institutions, researchers, private sector and community groups who want to be involved in utilization of germplasm through superior cultivar assembly programs. In the future, management of vegetable genetic banks would be under the Tropical Vegetable Development Unit of AIC.
Workshop on The Genetic Bank Management was carried out in line with efforts to create an excellent genetic bank to support vegetable development globally and to realize sustainable food sovereignty. The workshop was planned to be held every year for the next 3-5 years. Therefore, the theme of the workshop was the Management of Genetic Resources to Support Food Security as well as the inauguration of the UGM vegetable genetic bank.