The National Agrobiodiversity Center under the Rural Development Administration (RDA) in Jeonju, Republic of Korea, is the largest international genebank of Korea. The National Agrobi-odiversity Center has continuously been making efforts to introduce overseas genetic resources to its collection and has currently grown into a world-class PGR holding genebank. Currently, several steps are undertaken to, improve the accessibility of the collection to national as well as international researchers, improve data available on the resources and amend the passport in-formation of the accessions. With the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol, the origin of ge-netic resources is being highlighted as an important input in the passport information of germplasms. The RDA-Genebank actively responds to the Nagoya Protocol by supplementing passport data of resources lacking information on the origin of germplasm. In addition, a large number of conserved resources are continuously multiplied, and agronomic traits are investi-gated concurrently. With the traditional methods of characterization of the germplasm requiring a significant amount of time and effort, we have intiated high-throughput phenotyping using digital techniques to improve our germplasm data. Primarily, we have started adding seed phenotype information followed by measuring root phenotypes which are stored under agro-nomic traits. This may be the initial step for a germplasm center to use large-scale high-throughput techniques for their collection. In this shortcommunication, we aim to provide an introduction to the RDA- Genebank, adopted international standards, and establishment of high throughput phenotyping techniques for improvement of passport information.

Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) is a framework which refers to a relatively recent type of legal requirements for access to and/or use of “genetic resources”. They are based on diverse national and regional laws and regulations, which mostly result from the implementation of the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its supplementary agreement, the Nagoya Protocol. Their ambition is to achieve fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the use of genetic resources as an incentive to conserve and sustainably use them. This paper describes the experiences, practical constraints and complexities encountered by users of genetic resources when dealing with ABS legislation, with a focus on users from the private sector. We provide insights on how ABS laws have fundamentally changed the way of working with genetic resources in the hope that it inspires re-thinking of the ABS framework, to better support the overall objectives of the CBD.

This study presents a detailed assessment on the impact of the Brazilian legal framework related to the access and benefit sharing provisions of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The research is based on a comprehensive dataset that was systematically collected over several years, directly from the official government bodies responsible for its implementation. The aim of the study is to contribute to a fact-based discussion on the effectiveness of national ABS laws, focusing on the Brazilian legal framework, first established in the year 2000 and revised in 2015, as a case example. This study balances the costs and benefits of the Brazilian ABS system and assesses the regulatory challenges it poses to individuals, companies, and institutions that perform research, share knowledge, develop, manufacture or market products derived from Brazilian biodiversity. The study indicates that, after over 22 years of operation, the regulatory challenges are still real and relevant, and that the significant volume of data collected from users on access, prior commercialization and shipment of genetic materials abroad was never systematically assessed by the agencies in charge. Besides, it shows that the costs incurred by the government in managing the policy itself have been higher than the economic benefits it has made possible, and that the institutional mechanisms in place since 2015 have not been able to allocate the monetary benefits contributed by users to the National Benefit Sharing Fund to any projects aimed at developing sustainable uses or preserving Brazilian biodiversity.