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Looters Wreck Afghan Seed-Bank

Theft threatens rebuilding of war-zone agriculture

Tuesday, September 10, 2002
By Charlotte Westney
nature

Redistributing seeds to areas of conflict is not a new idea. Future Harvest centres sent seeds to Rwanda, Somalia and Vietnam. "It has become a very significant part of international seed-bank work to reassemble collections," says Hawtin.

Looters have destroyed scientific seed stores in Afghanistan that held genetic information vital for rebuilding the country's agriculture. International seed-banks and aid money are helping to rebuild the collection, but some plant varieties may have been lost for good.

Thieves scattered the seeds while stealing the jars in which they were stored, as they stripped houses in the northern city of Ghazni and the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, some time before March.

"They stole containers worth 5 cents and threw my valuable collection all over the ground, amongst the rubble," recalls Nasrat Wassimi of the Future Harvest Consortium to Rebuild Agriculture in Afghanistan, one of 16 food and environmental research centres around the world making up the Future Harvest Consortium.

Wassimi and his colleagues had spent 10 years rebuilding the seed-bank after its home and contents were destroyed for the first time in 1992, following fighting between Mujahadeen factions. Then the seed containers turned up in Pakistan markets sold as sugar pots. This time, the jars were hidden in the basements of several private houses - ironically, to protect them from looting.
(More: nature.com News Source)
2002 © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines, Ltd.

Dan