International awareness to safeguard global biodiversity has necessitated urgent steps for its conservation and rational or sustainable utilisation at local, regional and global level. This fringing awareness has come a little late but not too late. Disappearance of renewable biological resources from their centres of diversity has been at alarming rate, thanks to over-exploitation of tropicalforests and marine ecosystems. There is a vast amount of information available on indigenous species which need to be utilised and harnessed for human welfare, there is no action plan for conservation and utilisation of biological diversity and genetic resources. The preservation as well as ownership of biodiversity and genetic resources has thus become vey important. Therefore, it has become apparent to build safe regional centers in homelands of species; for preservation of vanishing biomaterials. At the same time, the importance of physical and cultural environment cannot be ignored for keeping the genetic diversity intact. The establishment of genetic resources centres for these efforts has been one of the major thrust of this project which would eventually serve as building of "field gene banks" (using in situ technologies) and seed gene banks (using ex-situ technologies).

M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation