"Gene preservation is a national issue and the plant varieties found in the Plant Diversity Centre are national treasures", Minister for Rural Development Sándor Fazekas said at a press conference at the institute in Tápiószele on Friday.
Mr. Fazekas added that the work that goes on in the institute is also significant with regard to the country's independence, because it is the background base of GMO-free propagation. The development of the gene bank network and the preservation of the plant varieties stored in the Diversity Centre are also primary tasks in rural development strategy. The preservation of these varieties is a question of national security, and also a responsibility towards future generations, the Minister said. The gene bank is Tápiószele, which is continuously growing, is the fifth largest in Europe and the thirteenth largest worldwide. It is this collection work that makes it possible for agriculture to rely on important plant varieties in the future, Mr. Fazekas stressed.
According to an FAO estimate, 75 percent of the varieties used in agriculture have disappeared over the past century, but Hungary is an exception, because we still have out own varieties, Minister Fazekas indicated.
With reference to the work of the institution, Secretary of State for Agricultural Economy György Czerván emphasised its importance from a food security point of view: "It is important that we be able to produce sufficient quantities of high quality propagation materials here at home, rather than being dependent on others". Mr. Czerván also drew attention to the fact that the institute cooperates with other Hungarian institutions to develop domestic protein feeds. He reminded those present that Hungary had signed the treaty aimed at keeping the Danube region free of GMO soy, according to which the eight signatory countries are cooperating jointly within the fields of research and production in the interests of reducing import dependency. György Czerván also mentioned that a significant proportion of funding will relate to greening, one of the most important elements of which is achieving and maintaining biological diversity, to which the Ministry would provide all possible help for the work of the Plant Diversity Centre.
The Centre's Director, Borbála Baktay, spoke about the work of the institute, which ha been operating in its current from since 2010; 94 thousand samples from 1100 plant varieties are stored and preserved at the Centre. Stocks are primarily derived from collection and from seed exchanges organised with international gene banks, and the Centre's main responsibility is gene conservation. This enables the survival of for instance plants that are no longer included in the national catalogue and have been edged out of cultivation by other varieties. Their preservation is also important because they may still be utilised with great success in small vegetable gardens and family farms in view of the fact that they wave already adapted to domestic conditions, she said.
The Director of the Plant Diversity Centre also added that although the institute deals primarily with the preservation of arable crops and vegetables, is hs also been storing the seeds of species that grow in the wild since 2010 within the framework of the Pannon Seed Bank project, and so the institute covers the whole spectrum of domestic plant preservation.
(MTI)
