December 8, 2022
The World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg), with support from the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is launching a new initiative to assist Southeast Asian countries in rescuing, safeguarding, and conserving vegetable biodiversity.
Building on the success of the Taiwan Africa Vegetable Initiative (TAVI), WorldVeg expands its impact in Southeast Asia with the launch of the Taiwan-Southeast Asia Vegetable
Germplasm Initiative – Seed Home-coming (TAsVI) on 6 December 2022.
TAsVI is a 3-year initiative that aims to strengthen international collaboration to rescue and safeguard vegetable biodiversity in Asia while enhancing climate resilience, health, and nutrition for the current and future generations.
“TAsVI plans to strengthen capacity and knowledge sharing among national genebanks, starting in Southeast Asia, to improve the collection, conservation, and utilization of vegetable biodiversity,” said Dr. Maarten van Zonneveld, WorldVeg Genebank Manager. “Establishing a collaborative platform among national genebanks in Southeast Asia, Taiwan, WorldVeg, and the Global Crop Diversity Trust will be a good start.”
These seeds were collected in the 1990s and 2000s by WorldVeg and its partners from 14 countries in Asia: Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Lao, Cambodia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bhutan.
“WorldVeg has global responsibility for the collection, evaluation, conservation, and distribution of vegetable germplasm. These precious resources are maintained for the benefit of farmers and agricultural research throughout the world as international public goods,” said Dr. Marco Wopereis, WorldVeg Director General.
To date, the WorldVeg genebank in Taiwan houses about 65,000 vegetable accessions, covering 330 species originating from 155 countries, while the WorldVeg genebank in Tanzania holds more than 2,000 accessions—Africa’s largest collection of traditional vegetables. These collections are of tremendous value to humanity, either for direct use in farmers’ fields or as a source for crop improvement.
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