Summary Report of the Genetic Resources Policy Committee (GRPC) Meetings Held in 2005

This report provides details concerning nine of the issues considered by the GRPC during their 17th and 18th meetings held in 2005. They are: 1.Implementing the “Guiding principles for the development of Future Harvest Centres’ policies to address the possibility of unintentional presence of transgenes in ex situ collections”. 2) The development of the Future Harvest Centres’ draft agreement with the Governing Body to place their ex situ PGRFA collections under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. 3) Implementation of Article 15.4 of the International Treaty, 4) declining rates of acquisition by Future Harvest Centre Genebanks and future acquisition strategies, 5) Ethical principles informing how Future Harvest Centres should deal with potentially confidential knowledge they develop in private sector partnerships and b. traditional knowledge they acess and use. 6) Promoting consistency among Centres' Intellectual Property Policy Statements, 7) Trends in the appropriation of , and the extension of controls over, genetic resources for food and agriculture that limit their availability fo research and breeding, 8) Invasive species and policy issues for the CGIAR, and 9) Centres' technology transfers as benefits sharing and Centres' contributions to farmers' rights pursuant to the International Treaty. This document also contains a brief for the Centres on teh Agreement with the Governing Body. This document was discussed at the Business Meeting at AGM2005.