Evolutions and stakes of genetic resources management

Abstract: For hundreds of years, intuitively or deliberately, farmers and breeders have taken advantage of the slow and constant renewal of genetic diversity in their domesticated plants or animals. Their management efficiently combines selection to maintain existing varieties or breeds and selection to extract new biological items meeting incoming necessities and environmental changes. The traditional practice is now criticized for three main reasons. The fear that it might not follow the accelerated occurrence of new demands and changes is one. The second derives from advances in biology and technology that indeed offer the expected answers provided the existence of residual diversity in present stocks. At last, the management of genetic resources is no longer the concern of specialists. Interest in the issue has been taken up by public opinions when they realized that genetic diversity is a component of overall biodiversity and that its intimate knowledge and uses transforms the vision of our relation to the living world. What is at stake today in genetic resources management is combining three selection approaches. The two traditional are still thoroughly relevant. A third one offers a process aiming at constant and random enrichment of the existing variety of diversity in domesticated plants and animals, and giving a major and renewed place to men’ imagination and innovation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]