Community biodiversity development and conservation programme

This program is designed to unite two forms of crop improvement and conservation which operate side by side with little interaction. The institutional system linking genebanks with institutional and private industry, breeding, seed production and, ultimately, distribution to farmers. The non-institutional informal system is called the farmer/community system and uses local landraces and integrating conservation and utilization in a dynamic system of on-farm crop improvement and seed production. In most of the developing world the informal seed sector is much larger than the formal seed sector. The main difference is not between commercial and subsistence farms, but between crop types. It would be of great benefit for both systems if cooperation was established.