Article ID: CBB084334891

From Working Collections to the World Germplasm Project: Agricultural Modernization and Genetic Conservation at the Rockefeller Foundation (2017)

unapi

This paper charts the history of the Rockefeller Foundation’s participation in the collection and long-term preservation of genetic diversity in crop plants from the 1940s through the 1970s. In the decades following the launch of its agricultural program in Mexico in 1943, the Rockefeller Foundation figured prominently in the creation of world collections of key economic crops. Through the efforts of its administrators and staff, the foundation subsequently parlayed this experience into a leadership role in international efforts to conserve so-called plant genetic resources. Previous accounts of the Rockefeller Foundation’s interventions in international agricultural development have focused on the outcomes prioritized by foundation staff and administrators as they launched assistance programs and especially their characterization of the peoples and “problems” they encountered abroad. This paper highlights instead how foundation administrators and staff responded to a newly emergent international agricultural concern—the loss of crop genetic diversity. Charting the foundation’s responses to this concern, which developed only after agricultural modernization had begun and was understood to be produced by the successes of the foundation’s own agricultural assistance programs, allows for greater interrogation of how the foundation understood and projected its central position in international agricultural research activities by the 1970s.

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Authors & Contributors
Curry, Helen Anne
Laveaga, Gabriela Soto
Ali Erken
Cobcroft, Wendy
Fullilove, Courtney
Kochupillai, Mrinalini
Concepts
Agriculture
Seeds
Biological diversity; biodiversity
Genetics
Plants
Seed industry and trade
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
20th century, late
19th century
Places
Mexico
United States
Japan
Ankara (Turkey)
Peru
Mediterranean region
Institutions
Rockefeller Foundation
Hacettepe Üniversitesi
Ankara Yüksek Ziraat Enstitüsü
World Health Organization (WHO)
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