World agriculture faces the challenge of feeding a burgeoning population whilst coping with a rapidly changing climate. If farmers and plant breeders are to improve and adapt their crops to meet these challenges, they need access to a wide range of useful diversity to work with. What does this mean for the crop conservation community? What could it do, nationally, internationally and in collaboration, to better ensure that farmers and plant breeders around the world have ready and reliable access to the genetic resources and related information they need?

The Global Crop Diversity Trust was established in 2004 to raise an endowment fund to give long-term security to important collections of crop diversity. Its overarching goal is a rational, effective, efficient and sustainable global system for the conservation and availability of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. This year, the Trust is winding down a 5-year project that has involved 86 institutes in 77 countries in regenerating threatened, unique collections and duplicating them for safeguarding in the international collections held by the CGIAR Centres. At the same time, the Trust has launched a 10-year project to collect and conserve the wild relatives of major crops and prepare them for use through prebreeding and evaluation. The seminar will present the activities and the findings of these projects and the Trust's partnership with the newly established CGIAR Genebank Programme. And it will pose some ideas for discussion on the global system needed for crop diversity conservation and use to meet challenges in crop improvement and adaptation in a hotter and more crowded world.