Cary Fowler served as the Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust from 2005 to 2012.[8] The trust's mandate is to ensure "the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide." Fowler was influential in the creation of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which currently houses samples of more than 783,000 distinct crop varieties. He stepped down as Executive Director of the trust in late 2012 but continues to serve in an advisory role and chairs the International Advisory Council of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.[4][8]
Working with partner genebanks in 71 countries during Fowler's tenure as Executive Director, the Trust helped rescue 83,393 unique crop varieties from extinction. It sponsored more than 40 projects to screen crop collections for important traits such as heat and drought tolerance. In partnership with the USDA, a state-of-the-art genebank management system ("GRIN-Global") was developed and made available to 38 genebanks internationally, and the first ever global portal to accession (sample) level information (Genesys)[9] was launched. The Trust's endowment grew more than $100 million to $134 million, and total funds raised surpassed $200 million.[10][11]
By the end of Fowler's tenure, the Trust concluded three major agreements intended to protect and conserve crop diversity: with the Millennium Seed Bank of Kew Gardens,[12] the indigenous communities in the Andes,[13] and the international genebanks of the Consultive Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).[14]
One example given here is for South Asia where we must pay attention from a food security perspective. Editor
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