2017 Frank Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources Lecture: Stewards of Our Agricultural Future

Plant genetic resources and the law: past, present, and future.

In the last 30 years legal developments at national and international levels have completely reshaped the ways in which plant genetic resources are used in global agriculture. This article explores some of the legal changes that affect access to plant germplasm. It also discusses developments that have affected and will in the future specifically impact upon the practices of international agric...

Abel Prize 2017 for Yves Meyer

Yves Francois Meyer was born July 19th, 1939 in Paris, but he grew up in Tunisia. After his studies at the École Normale Supérieure he was a teacher for three years at the school Prytanée Militaire in La Flèche (Loire Valley) and obtained a position in Strasbourg afterwards. During this period he prepared his PhD which he presented in 1966. Formally Jean-Pierre Kahane was his advisor, but he co...

Cryopreservation of Plant Genetic Resources

Presentation of the 2004 Kober Medal to K. Frank Austen.

The record shows that on February 26, 1924, Karl Arnstein emigrated from Czechoslovakia via Bremen, Germany, on the ocean liner George Washington. Arnstein, an engineer, had been hired to head the newly formed Goodyear-Zeppelin organization in Akron, Ohio. What Frank’s father did with his colleagues was to construct the largest manmade structure in the world, the Airdock, in which was built the...

Citizens' preferences for the conservation of agricultural genetic resources

Evaluation of conservation policies for agricultural genetic resources (AgGR) requires information on the use and non-use values of plant varieties and animal breeds, as well as on the preferences for in situ and ex situ conservation. We conducted a choice experiment to estimate citizens' willingness to pay (WTP) for AgGR conservation programmes in Finland, and used a latent class model to iden...