TAsVI – Taiwan – Southeast Asia Vegetable Germplasm Initiative

Start date: 1 September 2022
End date: 31 December 2024

The TAsVI project aims to strengthen international collaboration to rescue and safeguard vegetable biodiversity in Asia for climate resilient and healthy food systems. The project will repatriate seed of more than 3,000 accessions of unique and lost vegetable varieties collected in the 1990s and 2000s by national genebanks and the World Vegetable Center back to Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam. At a later stage, it will also assess how to repatriate more accessions and to other countries. Collaborative actions at a regional level are key to renew the seed of these accessions and to make it available for users, so the project will establish a platform among national genebanks in South East Asia, the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute, and WorldVeg to collaborate on the rescue, conservation, and use of Asian vegetable biodiversity, and strengthen capacity and knowledge sharing and connect them to a wide group of seed users including researchers, seed companies, and farmers. It will also strengthen the WorldVeg genebank regarding international standards on germplasm availability by returning seed to countries of collection, and genomic characterization to better understand diversity. TAsVI will also support awareness raising about the importance of rescuing vegetable biodiversity, in line with the Fruit and Vegetable Global Rescue Plan (presented by WorldVeg and partners during the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit).

Project manager: Maarten van Zonneveld