New Delhi, May 19: Government scientists have asserted that India has provided tens of thousands of samples of key foodcrops to global gene repositories, refuting allegations by sections of foreign researchers that India has been reluctant to share its plant resources.

The scientists with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) have said India ranks first in the list of contributors of plant germplasm in 11 gene banks maintained by the Consultative Group (CG) of International Agricultural Centres held "in-trust" for the global community.

India has over the past three decades submitted over 66,800 plant germplasm varieties - or 9.2 per cent - to more than 720,600 accessions maintained by the network of CG repositories, emerging at the top of its list of contributors, the ICAR scientists said in a report that analysed the flow of plant varieties from India. Crop scientists view such transfer of key plant material as critical for crop breeding and improvement programmes aimed at food security.

"This analysis should dispel notions that India hasn't been sharing its plant resources," said Rishi Kumar Tyagi, a principal scientist at the ICAR's National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi, who led the study of plant germ flow from India over the past four decades.

Plant gene repositories in the US, Russia, Taiwan, Germany and the UK also have several thousands of accessions of Indian origin. At a gene bank maintained by the US department of agriculture, over 22,000 among its total of more than 625,000 accessions are of Indian origin.

Crop researchers based in Europe had two years ago raised concerns that access to Indian plant germplasm was limited. Scientists from Norway had pointed out that the world's largest global seed vault maintained by Norway in Svalbard had very few samples from India.

Tyagi and his colleagues have challenged that claim.

The Svalbard gene vault has over 824,000 germplasm accessions from over 60 gene banks, among which over 66,000 accessions - or over 8 per cent - deposited by 24 gene banks are of Indian origin, the ICAR scientists said in their analysis just published in the journal PLOS One.

Although India has directly submitted only 25 samples to Svalbard, over 66,000 samples are of Indian origin, having been deposited there by the CG crop research centres or by other national gene banks. The International Rice Research Institute in Manila, Philippines, has deposited its entire rice germplasm collection of 116,600 at Svalbard, among which over 16,220 accessions belonging to 18 species of rice have their origin in India, the ICAR scientists wrote in their report.

The ICAR scientists have listed 16 crops, including rice, wheat, maize, chickpea, eggplant, groundnut and pigeon pea, among others, that have been deposited by India into gene repositories across the world. Among over 2,800,000 samples held by 446 organisations worldwide, 106,000 are from India.

"India is also a big beneficiary of such germplasm exchange," said Kailash Bansal, head of the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, who was not involved in the analysis. "One recent example is kiwifruit - it's import of germplasm that brought kiwifruit to India," he said.

Crop scientists also point out that several varieties of foodcrops, including vegetables, currently cultivated across the country owe their origin to foreign germplasm.

The analysis has revealed that the flow of plant germplasm from India has indeed slowed down over the past decade owing to national biodiversity laws that India enacted in 2002. The national biodiversity regulations lay down strict rules on the transfer of plant genetic material from India.

From the mid-1970s through the early 1990s, India used to supply more than 4,000 germplasm samples each year. But over the past five years, the number has been less than 1,000 per year.

"Over the past decade, the number of requests India has received for germplasm has also declined," Tyagi said.