The recent development of ideas on biodiversity conservation was already being considered almost three-quarters of a century ago for crop plants and the wild species related to them, by the Russian geneticist N. . Vavilov. He was undoubtedly the first scientist to understand the impor tance for humankind of conserving for utilization the genetic diversity of our ancient crop plants and their wild relatives from their centres of diversity. His collections showed various traits of adaptation to environ mental extremes and biotypes of crop diseases and pests which were unknown to most plant...

One of the world centers of crop evolution and origin, Ethiopia has long been recognized as an important area of diversity for several major and various minor crops. Based on an international conference held in Addis Ababa, this book describes how plant genetic diversity in Ethiopia is of vital importance in breeding new varieties of crops with desirable characteristics, such as increased resistance to pests and diseases and greater adaptation to heat and drought. The three main sections in the book consider the Ethiopian center of diversity, germ plasm or genetic material collection and...

It is a distressing truism that the human race during the last millennium has caused the exponential loss of plant genetic diversity throughout the world. This has had direct and negative economic, political and social consequences for the human race, which at the same time has failed to exploit fully the positive benefits that might result from conserving and exploiting the world's plant genetic resources. However, a strong movement to halt this loss of plant diversity and enhance its utilisation for the benefit of all humanity has been underway since the 1960's (Frankel and Bennett, 1970;...