Establishment and Current Status of Community Seed-Banks

*Corresponding Author: Wubeshet Teshome Article Info Article history: Received 4 August 2020 Received in revised form 18 August 2020 Accepted 25 August 2020


Introduction
A community seed bank is defined as a locally governed and managed, mostly informal, institution whose core function is to maintain seeds for local use (Development Fund, 2011) eyond this core conservation function, community seed banks have a broad range of additional purposes and vary significantly in scope, size, governance and management models, infrastructure and technical aspects. There is considerable variability in the performance of community seed banks in terms of technical and operational capacities (e.g. technical rigour in monitoring germination and ensuring viability of stored seed), governance, and operational management. Technical and operational challenges are often compounded by lack of legal recognition and scarce financial resources. Past experience has shown that community seed bank initiatives are usually quite effective during their initial years, but with withdrawal of external support, many cut back on activities or stop altogether As in other organizational efforts, when community seed banks are established without proper foundations, long-term survival is difficult. Nonetheless, in many countries one can find well-functioning community seed banks (Vernooy et al., 2015). In recent years, the number of newly established community seed banks has been on the rise partly due to the growing support of national and state or provincial governments.
Ethiopia is a country of tremendous biological and cultural diversity. The country is particularly rich in crop genetic diversity as it is the center of diversity for several crop species. Esquinas-Alcázar, (2005) The centuries of selection by farmers and the natural environment, has led to the development of farmers' varieties which are typically adapted to specific agroecological conditions. These farmers' varieties are usually grown with very little inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides. Most of farmers' varieties of the different crops are still in the hands of the farmers, but a lot of them might also have been lost. One of the reasons for the loss of the farmers' varieties was their replacement with improved varieties (Demissie, 1999;Takeshima & Salau, 2010;Giller et al., 2009).
Generally, community seed banks began to establish at the end of the 1980s with the support from international and national nongovernmental organization (NGOs). Countries that pioneer various types of community seed banks include Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Zimbabwe (BI, 2015). So, community seed banks have been around for about 30 years, and are found across the globe. Through difficult to pinpoint the origin of CSBs, but NGOs have played a key role and continue to do so in many countries (Vernooy et al., 2015). In recent years, in a number of countries, government agencies at the national level have become interested in establishing and supporting CSBs, often as part of a national on-farm ( in -situ ) conservation strategy. CSBs established by EBI are one of them. In Ethiopia, CSBs were begun to be established since 1997 after a technical cooperation agreement was signed with UNDP/GEF in 1994 with a $2.5 Million financial initiative.
Community level CSBs are managed by Crop conservatory and Seed producer Association. Crop conservatory and seed producer Associations are organized and established at district level (having several villages and communities) Farmers were organized and trained on Agro bio diversity conservation and management, seed selection. Farmers were organized by District Cooperative office with collaboration to Agricultural office for legal entities The key supporter of CSB is District Agricultural office, District Administration office, District youth and women office, District trade office, District land administration office university, NGO and district cooperative office. The members of executive committee are elected every three year by members. According to Table 1

Restoration of "lost" varieties
Community seed banks continue to emerge in different parts of the world in response to concerns about the gradual loss of biological diversity in agricultural systems, the loss of seeds caused by natural disasters and the demands of farmers to participate in locally driven diversity management strategies. The expansion of improved seed, drought, development of infrastructure are some of the causes of loss of local (farmer) varieties.

Inventories and surveys on the status of farmer's varieties
The majority of farmers in Ethiopia still depend on farmers' varieties of crop plants. The varied agro-ecologies and farming systems prevailing in the country have greatly influenced the types and diversity of crops maintained by farmers in different parts of the country is different. These days, changes can be seen in cropping patterns particularly in areas with market access where the market influences the crop types. This has an impact on the occurrence of diversity of crops on farms and also the diversity within crops (IBC, 2012).
CSBs survey and inventory is necessary to monitor the status of farmers varieties in a given time interval. The information could also use by gene bank managers or curators to take appropriate conservation decisions and strategies. This activity is conducted in CSBs, and it is often done in coordination with head office.

Conserving endangered and locally adapted farmers' varieties
According to Altieri & Merrick (1987). There is no single way to run the technical side of a community seed bank. The bank's management committee decides how to record seed-sample information (i.e., the "passport data" as it is called in formal ex situ institutions), which descriptors to use to distinguish accessions, what storage infrastructure to set up (keeping seeds genetically pure and healthy is an essential task) and how to manage seed distribution, evaluation and regeneration activities.

Conclusion
Community seed banks can serve as key local sources of germplasm allowing farming communities to exchange seeds in a decentralized manner through social networks and organized events, such as diversity fairs and participatory seed exchanges. As such, community seed banks can operate as a central node in the local seed system and as a bridge to the supralocal level and the formal seed system, e.g., through links with other community seed banks, the national gene bank or other plant genetic resource institutions. Farmers' abilities to search for new forms of diversity, select new traits, cultivate and exchange selected materials with friends, relatives and community members are the basis for the processes that allow genetic materials to evolve and adapt.