The economics of preserving genetic diversity in Papua New Guinea's indigenous food crops in the context of world agriculture

• Department of Agriculture and Livestock, Papua New Guinea
• National Agricultural Research Institute, Papua New Guinea
• La Trobe University, Australia

PNG is a centre of genetic diversity for plantain bananas, aibika (an iron-rich leaf crop), sugar cane, taro and yams. The DAL maintains the genetic resources of those staple foods, as well as cassava and sweet potato, in its collections of germplasm - a term that denotes material which can be used to generate new plants. The germplasm consists of some seed, but mostly of vegetative pieces of the varieties or accessions. Its gene pools are conserved by frequent vegetative propagation.
Plant breeders all over the world look to new centres of diversity for possible resistance to disease and other environmental hazards, and they need access to material from the PNG collections for crop improvement.
Without the collection, PNG could be vulnerable to new disease and pest attacks on its people's principal food supplies. It could also forego potential returns that might result from plant breeding genetic work.

This study will provide information to the Department of Agriculture and Livestock (DAL) to enable them to design future policies for germplasm conservation in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Only aibika, banana, sweet potato and taro are the subject of this study since sugar cane can be readily investigated using private funds and cassava and yams are of less importance. Ultimately, a model will be designed which should make it easier to envisage the trade-offs between the costs and benefits of each aspect of germplasm conservation.

Firstly, the current state of collections and how they are conserved and updated must be accurately described and assigned monetary values. The study will assess the usefulness of each crop type relative to other important crops, for medicinal or fibre purposes. It will also consider the risk of losing the collections because of natural or human factors, and what their benefits are worth to PNG.
Secondly, an economic analysis will predict the effects of varying the amount the DAL spends on each crop type, and the consequences of PNG not having a collection at all.
The model will choose financial goals and objectives and find how best to achieve them in spite of constraints. One method might be to maximise farmer's yields, and make calculations about the maintenance of appropriate germplasm collections. The expenditure on maintenance is a form of insurance with returns generally non-financial since the varieties are being preserved as raw material for future plant breeding.
Further analysis will examine appropriate institutional structures for sustaining such collections, and will incorporate the changing market for germplasm and the effects of plant breeders rights, farmers rights, and the Biodiversity Convention.