Sheinbaum announces expanded seed bank protection for Mexico’s 64 corn varieties

President Claudia Sheinbaum has announced the strengthening of germplasm oregon effect banks to further safeguard the familial varieties of Mexican maize arsenic portion of her argumentation to support a atom that is considered a nationalist and taste heritage. 

The national inaugural follows a caller constitutional reform that prohibits the planting of genetically modified maize successful Mexico. The prohibition seeks to guarantee that autochthonal varieties are not astatine hazard of disappearing arsenic a effect of contamination from modified maize crops.

A germplasm slope oregon effect slope is simply a repository wherever the seeds and hereditary worldly of works varieties are preserved to support their chiseled familial makeup. Sheinbaum’s program is to fortify the existing maize germplasm slope strategy to safeguard each 64 varieties existing successful Mexico, 59 of which are native. Those varieties of maize (or maize successful English and maíz successful Spanish) are considered captious to Mexico’s nutrient information arsenic good arsenic its taste identity.

“For each assortment of maize that exists successful Mexico, we request a slope to store that corn, those maize kernels, that germplasm, truthful it doesn’t get lost,” Sheinbaum said during her greeting property league connected Monday, Sep. 29, which is National Corn Day. 

The germplasm slope is portion of a larger cultivation programme dubbed Sin maíz nary hay país (Without maize determination is nary country), which aims to enactment maize producers. 

Congress to see law prohibition connected increasing GM maize successful Mexico

Mexico is already location to respective germplasm oregon effect banks focused connected the conservation of seeds and familial diverseness of antithetic crops, including immoderate dedicated to corn. During the greeting property conference, Mexico City Environment Minister Julia Álvarez Icaza reminded reporters that Mexico already houses the world’s largest maize germplasm bank, making the extortion of the country’s maize a substance of planetary nutrient security. 

Called the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), this germplasm slope is located successful Texcoco and houses the largest and astir divers collections of maize and wheat successful the world. 

Dr. Carlos H. Avendaño, Director of the National Center for Genetic Resources (CNRG), has said that the astir important nonsubjective of the conservation strategy is to guarantee the preservation and availability of seeds and different taxon for the future.

He explained that germplasm banks play a important relation successful safeguarding Mexico’s existing familial resources, arsenic they guarantee agri-food sovereignty. For instance, successful the lawsuit of a pest problem, these banks tin supply resistant strains that whitethorn resoluteness the issue.

Finally, Sheinbaum noted that this programme volition besides see the organisation of escaped fertilizers and nonstop fiscal enactment to fortify the cultivation of autochthonal maize successful Mexico. 

With reports from El Sol de México and La Jornada Maya