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 t is probably fair to say that, until the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) at Rio in 1992, many people in the developed world had never heard of the word biodiversity. It would be interesting to find out what the word actually suggests to them. When they did hear the number of threatened animal and plant species quoted in thousands or tens of thousands, they must have asked themselves: "Not every one of these can be of value. Why is this such an issue?"
Since Rio, however, organizations like ICARDA have worked hard to spread the word that agrobiodiversity--the store of genetic material used in agriculture--is the most important area of biodiversity to human existence. It is where we find the genetic material we need to breed crops that will give stable yields and fight off pests and diseases. And in agrobiodiversity, relatively small genetic variations, detected only by scientists, can mean the difference between a plant that is desperately important, and one that is useless.
Dryland agrobiodiversity is especially important, because of the harsh nature of such areas. That harshness means that food security is always threatened by changes in the environment, variations in the weather and assaults by fast-mutating pathogens. A plant that has survived in such areas does have something to offer the plant breeder.
But now we must stop just talking and worrying about the loss of biodiversity, and start doing something about it instead. I am struck by the words of Prof. Kamal Batanouny, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Science at Cairo University and General Supervisor of the Desert Research Centre, on this subject. In a paper presented to the conference Biological Diversity: Its Conservation and Sustainability in the Arab
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