Connecting national genebanks directly with smallholders supports local resilience efforts

Connecting national genebanks directly with smallholders supports local resilience efforts

National genebanks are a treasure trove of valuable varieties and traits .

April 15, 2026

Genebanks Crop diversity Research

Connecting national genebanks directly with smallholders supports local resilience efforts. Great to have our paper in Plant Genetic Resources on this work from Crop Trust.

National genebanks are a treasure trove of valuable varieties and traits - yet genebanks rarely test and supply these varieties directly with farmers.

This is a missed opportunity: national genebanks can facilitate farmers’ direct access to crop diversity as a participatory and rapid agricultural adaptation strategy.

Our paper shows how five African national genebanks (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia) evaluated and shared their seed collections with smallholders to support local resilience efforts.

We show how these “Germplasm User Groups” (GUGs) were developed to evaluate genebank accessions across diverse agroecological zones - helping farmers find and access new varieties for traits such as drought tolerance, pest resistance, and early maturity.

This paper shows:

🤝 How building systems for trialling and two-way exchange of crop diversity between genebanks and farmers can rapidly identify valuable accessions for uptake. Doing so provides a faster methods to identify immediate solutions and identify new diversity to conserve.
💡 How building participatory trialling methods through GUGs provided a streamlined model for farmers to identify diverse solutions to a mix of local needs.
🌱 The value in building use of genenbank collections - especially for national genebanks that mostly hold locally adapted varieties which are well-placed to address local challenges.
📈 That this potential for national genebanks should be recognised and incentivised with funding to further utilise national crop diversity to address local challenges.

Thank you to a great team of authors (particularly Fred Rattunde and Eva Weltzien for a huge effort!):

  • Germany: Fred Rattunde, Nora P. Castañeda-Álvarez & Eva Weltzien
  • Ethiopia: Yeshitila Mekbib, Tamene Yohannes Gudaye & Melesse Maryo Salamo - from Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute - EBI
  • Ghana: matilda bissah, Patrick Attamah & Rashied Tetteh - from Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-Plant Genetic Resources Research Institute (@CSIR-PGRRI) & Upper East Region Farming Systems Research Group.
  • Kenya:Peterson Wambugu, Evans Ouma, Vinter Achieng Otiego, Joseph Ndungu Kimani & Desterio Ondieki Nyamongo - from @Genetic Resources Research Institute (GeRRI), Rongo University & Maseno University.
  • Nigeria: Mayowa Olubiyi, Olabisi Alamu, Dickson Nwosu, Sunday Aladele, Anthony Okere Ph.D. - from National Centre for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology ( NACGRAB)
  • Zambia: Sumini Sampa, Masiye Tembo & Graybill Munkombwe - from Zambian National Plant Genetic Resources Centre (NPGRC)
  • UK: me! - from Norwich Institute for Sustainable Development & UEA DEV

Read the article 👉 https://lnkd.in/eVuRsKFB

📸: Crop Trust & Neil Palmer https://lnkd.in/esQdDpRk