Efforts to rehabilitate ICARDA’s gene bank to recover 130,000 seed samples

Aleppo (ST): The Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, in cooperation with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), is working to rehabilitate the genetic bank at Tal Hadya station in the countryside of Aleppo, which is one of the most important genetic banks in the region and the world, and it included samples of major crops collected from all over the world.

ICARDA representative in Syria, Dr. Majd Jamal, explained that the bank was subjected to vandalism and the theft of its contents, especially laboratories and equipment, by armed terrorist groups, indicating that the number of samples that were stored in two storage units, one for the long term at a temperature of -20 degrees Celsius, and the other for the short term at a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius, estimated at more than 130,000 samples collected in cooperation with national programs from all over the world, of which about 9,000 were collected in cooperation with the Syrian national program, and is considered an invaluable global scientific wealth.

Minister of Agriculture Mohammad Hassan Qatna stressed the importance of the genetic bank and the varieties of seeds that have genetic origins, pointing out that Syria is keen to rehabilitate the center after it was vandalized, noting that  the administrative building and two wells were rehabilitated and 300 hectares were cultivated in the lands surrounding the center with various appropriate varieties, which is a positive step to make this important research center start working and return to its former glory.

K.Q.