An interesting announcement was made for the union budget proposed on February 1, 2025. The government said its intention was to establish a second genetic bank in the country, with its lofty goal to ensure genetic resources and food security for future generations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also announced that the second Gene Bank “will strengthen India’s leadership in the global biodiversity conservation” and continues to expand, continuing: “This initiative reflects India’s commitment to maintaining agricultural biodiversity, ensuring the future of food, and supporting sustainable agricultural systems”.
All of this is good news. But there is a catch. The budget announcement also mentioned that the second Gene Bank “will provide public and private sector protective support for genetic resources.” Does this mean that the second national genetic bank will provide a unique space for the private sector to collect and conserve genetic material? Before we get to know the captures, let’s understand what gene banks are and why they are becoming increasingly important.
Gene banks are the places where genes are stored, most commonly found in plants. These are usually in the form of seeds, but may also include other types of genetic material, such as cuttings, plant tissues grown by reproduction, such as potatoes or even pollen. India also maintains the genetic diversity of animals and fish in the “animal gene bank” and “fish gene bank”, but they are another. Here, we mainly talk about seed banks. Now in the new era, there are some banks that store purified DNA samples and DNA sequences.
Most gene banks are freezers where seeds can be stored and kept alive for a long time for later use. Another approach is to build a gene bank in areas where permafrost is never melted. Here, the cooling function is natural, and in addition to being spare, it can also eliminate the expensive use of electrical cooling. The most famous permafrost gene bank was established in 2008 within the Arctic Circle in Svalbard, Norway. Svalbard Bank, also known as the seed bank, was carved 150 meters deep on the mountain.
India also built a permafrost gene bank in Chang La, Ladakh, with a height of 17,585 feet. The temperature here ranges from minus 4°C to minus 40°C below 20%, thus providing the best conditions for long-term protection of the seeds. The Gene Bank commissioned in 2010 to store more than 5,000 seed samples of vegetables and high-altitude crops.
There are other types of gene banks. The wild bank is a place where multiple crops or trees are planted a year to preserve genetic material in the form of a site. This has the advantage of crops and trees adapting to genetic material that changes in the environment. This ensures that they are still viable in the future of changing environmental conditions.
Gene Movement has developed the concept of a zero-energy community gene/seed library where seeds are stored at ambient temperature, so there is no power expenditure for cooling. Seed samples should be grown regularly to refresh the seeds and expose them to the environment. This ensures that the adaptation process continues with each cycle and that seeds in the bank are still viable in a changing environment.
Why Gene Banking becomes so important: Gene Banking is crucial to food and nutrition security for everyone. There are more than 1,700 national and international genetic banks around the world with large quantities of food crops to face increasing challenges such as climate change, civil wars, new diseases, and more. Meet the enormous changes in the climate and cause huge changes in the agricultural system, thus adapting to this adaptive disease.
Protecting genetic diversity in the private sector: Now attracts attention to the involvement of the private sector in genetic diversity. The genetic resources of any country belong almost exclusively to its indigenous and agricultural communities. They have developed, used and preserved for generations, so they have ownership of them. Traditionally, the public sector and its institutions and genetic banks have collected and protected genetic material in a “people, people” model. Therefore, it should be retained.
There is no guarantee that the private sector will play a role in protection and raise legal issues regarding ownership, exclusivity and potential intellectual property (intellectual property) challenges.
In any case, it is important that the private sector has unrestricted access to the material in the gene pool within the framework of certain rules and regulations. The international convention states that when the private sector uses genetic materials to develop products that profit from it, they must share a certain amount of profit with the National Gene Fund. The material belongs to the agricultural community, and its use for profits entitles them to share. It can be added that although the private sector has been freely accessing genetic material, its contribution to the National Gene Fund remains minimal at best. This is sufficient in itself to not expand private sector participation. After a lot of consideration by Indian experts and parliamentarians, national laws provide a fair partnership in the use of people’s genetic resources. There is no comprehensive and transparent national debate on the subject at least, and there is no need to change that change.
Dr. Suman Sahai is a scientist, trained in genetics and founder of genetics, a research and policy organization engaged in food and livelihoods.
