Sri Lanka’s Cabinet of Ministers in their weekly meeting held under the chairmanship of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has agreed to establish a SAARC Seed Bank in Sri Lanka in keeping with the agreement reached at the 17th SAARC Summit held in Maldives last week. The objectives of setting up of the Seed Bank, as agreed upon by SAARC countries, are to provide regional support to national seed security efforts, address regional seed shortages through collective actions and foster inter-country partnership. The entity will act as a Regional Seed Security reserve for the Member States. Each member country is expected to contribute one percent of their total seed requirement to the Bank as reserve. The Seed Bank will help the member countries to make available quality seeds, exchange seeds and plant genetic resources and share practices, technologies and techniques among them to produce quality seeds. Under the agreement, all member countries will have enough stocks of quality seeds, and in case of calamities, one member can borrow from the other. Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has proposed the establishment of a seed bank at the 16th SAARC Summit held in Thimpu, Bhutan, in 2010.
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