Projects
The multi-country project, called In-Situ Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives Through Enhanced Information Management and Field Application, was launched in 2004, by Bioversity International in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MENR) in Sri Lanka, the national partner and international partners. Apart from Sri Lanka, Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar and Uzbekistan are involved in this project. The project is co-funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The other international agencies involved in the project are the Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the World Conservation Union (IUCN), UNEPs World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP/WCMC) and the German Centre for Documentation and Information in Agriculture (ZADI).
The wild relatives of crop plants include the progenitors of crops as well as species more or less closely related to them. Crop wild relatives are important both for improving agricultural production and for maintaining sustainable agroecosystems. Although the germplasm of some wild relatives have been conserved by the department in the PGRC gene bank (ex-situ conservation) most of the wild species in nature are in danger of getting extinct along with most of the biodiversity due to anthropocentric activities. Therefore there is an urgent need to conserve the wild relatives of crops which are essential for developing better varieties for feeding the increasing population.
For improving a current self-sufficient rate of Other Field Crops (OFC) and vegetables in Sri Lanka, the government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) put its national priority on increasing of food production as in “Mahinda Chintana: Vision for the Future”. Also, GOSL set its own target as doubling production of certified vegetable seeds in “Mahinda Chintana: A Brighter Future in 2010”, through improving productivity and quality of domestic vegetable seed production under public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives.
In these circumstances, GOSL requested a technical cooperation project to the government of Japan through Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) which aims to improve agricultural productivity and quality through development and disseminating applicable production technology for farmers of qualified vegetable seeds.
The Project is implemented in the framework of JICA’s umbrella country program “Agriculture, fishery and rural development program”, which main tackling issues are low productivity, lack of agricultural management technology of farmers, diversification of agricultural products, participatory development.
This project aims to tackle the issue of agricultural productivity and diversification of agriculture and have high validity in Japan cooperation strategy.