Yesterday, Dr. Zhou Jinfeng, the SG of CBCGDF, wrote an open discussion letter to Professor Ohmi Ohnishi of Agriculture College of Kyoto University in Japan about Fagopyrum resources discovered in China. Here shares the English version:
 
Dear Professor Ohmi Ohnishi,
 
Since China acceded to the Nagoya Protocol in September last year, I have been thinking about relevant issues. Yesterday I went to the Chinese Institution of Agricultural Sciences to visit the experts, and I would like to discuss the matter with you in this letter.
 
As a professor of Agricultural College of Kyoto University and an internationally renowned expert in Fagopyrum germplasm resources, your team, as well as Korean scientists Sun-hee Woo’s team, used Fagopyrum homotropicum with the self-affinity and self-incompatibility of Fagopyrum hybridization, generated self-affinity offspring Fagopyrum esculentum (homotype) and solved the breeding problem of low fertility caused by self-incompatibility of sweet Fagopyrum, and it had a wide range of applications.
 
We noted that the earliest reports related to F. homotropicum appeared at the 6th International Fagopyrum Conference in 1995, and your report was titled “Discovery of New Fagopyrum Species and Its Implication for the Studies of Evolution of Fagopyrum and of the Origin of Cultivated Buckwheat”. In the report, you mentioned that you found a new wild Fagopyrum species in 1992 in Yongsheng area of Lijiang, Yunnan province, China, and named it Fagopyrum homotropicum ohnishi. You brought it back to Japan for cultivation and research, and it was used in many papers published by the later Fagopyrum breeding scientists.
 
Once the wild species was discovered, it was widely used in the crossbreeding of Fagopyrum in several countries, including Japan (Ohnishi), Canada (Campbell), South Korea (Woo) and Russia (Fesenko). A series of sweet Fagopyrum strains with self-crosslinking affinity and fertile properties were obtained and used in field experiments.
 
In addition, you also discovered and took away other Fagopyrum sources in China, reporting a total of eight wild Fagopyrum varieties and one near-source Fagopyrum cultivar (subspecies) of cultivated sweet Fagopyrum.
 
I have two requests for this letter:
1. According to the Nagoya Protocol benefits sharing principle, can you help us to contact the enterprises and scientific institutions benefiting from related wild resources in Yunnan to provide economic assistance to the impoverished population in Yunnan?
2. We are a public welfare organization specializing in the biodiversity conservation. We are cooperating with relevant experts in the protection of Fagopyrum and have established the “China Conservation Area for Fagopyrum”. We hope you can help us to raise funds so that valuable natural resources can be effectively protected.
 
I understand that your longevity, and also aware of your reputation in the industry. We hope that we work together to achieve biodiversity conservation and green development simultaneously.
 
Dr. Zhou Jinfeng
Secretary-General of CBCGDF

(source: internet)

by/Niu Jingmei, Shuya