Strengthening Global Rice Germplasm Sharing: Insights from the INGER Platform
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Plant genetic resources (PGR) constitute a strategic asset in mitigating climate change and ensuring global food security. Current international germplasm-sharing mechanisms predominantly emphasize the distribution and utilization of improved varieties, while institutional frameworks for accessing genebank holdings and pre-breeding lines remain underdeveloped. This gap has resulted in limited exploitation of genetic diversity and constrained potential for upstream breeding innovation. As a prominent multilateral mechanism, the International Network for the Genetic Evaluation of Rice (INGER) has expanded multi-environment trials to over 80 countries and facilitated the release of more than 1,120 varieties. However, with agricultural modernization and digitalization, INGER’s operations reflect structural challenges—including fragmented legal regimes, divergent regulatory and phytosanitary requirements, inadequate upstream resource-sharing mechanisms, and chronic underfunding. These impediments are not unique to INGER but indicative of broader institutional barriers in global rice germplasm exchange. Concurrently, emerging innovations—such as CGIAR’s GreenPass initiative, the regional Seeds Without Borders agreement, and proposed revisions to the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) enabling “direct use” of genebank materials—suggest pathways to overcome these bottlenecks. Using INGER as a central case study, this research examines the architecture of germplasm distribution and identifies key institutional constraints, while comparing governance models across multilateral and sovereign systems. We propose and design an integrated mechanism that incorporates genebank accessions, pre-breeding lines, and improved germplasm into a cohesive sharing platform. This full-spectrum system aims to contribute to a more efficient, resilient, and equitable global framework for germplasm exchange.
