(ECO)WORLD'S THIRD BIGGEST SEED GENE BANK ESTABLISHED IN ANKARA.ANKARA, Jul 30, 2009 (TUR tur: see ibex. ) -- The third biggest "Seed Gene Bank" of the world established in Ankara, Turkey on Thursday. Turkey's Agriculture & Rural Affairs Minister Mehmet Mehdi Eker Mehmet Mehdi Eker is Minister of Agriculture of Turkey and Member of Parliament for Diyarbakır of the ruling AKP. A veterinarian and agro-economist he had a career as a civil servant in the ministry of agriculture before entering politics at the age of 46. laid the foundation of the center, which is the biggest after China and the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . "Seed gene banks are food assurances of humanity. This will be the third biggest gene bank of the world and is expected to be concluded in December, 2009. Turkey's potential in agriculture will be activated with the bank," Eker said. Eker said his ministry was in an effort to solve delayed problems of agriculture with short, medium and long term projects. Eker said biological diversity and genetic resources rapidly lessened because negative elements caused by industrialization industrialization Process of converting to a socioeconomic order in which industry is dominant. The changes that took place in Britain during the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th century led the way for the early industrializing nations of western Europe and and urbanization, "this is alarming. 75 percent of the genetic diversity of the past century got lost now," he noted. Underlining that Turkey was rich of biological diversity and endemic plant species, Eker said 3,905 of the 12,000 endemic plant species were in Turkey, "Turkey should be aware of this richness and preserve this for the whole humanity." "The bank will contain genes of 250 thousand plant species," Eker said, noting that, "seeds collected within and outside the country can be protected here. Scientists will be able to use them as material in their experiments," he said. The world's largest seed bank is managed by the Agriculture Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), n.pr established in 1862, USDA is responsible for the safety of meat, poultry, and egg products. It conducts ongoing research in areas from human nutrition to new crop technologies and also helps ensure open . It holds more than 460,000 seed samples and has the capacity to store up to 1 million sample. (THROUGH ASIA Asia (ā`zhə), the world's largest continent, 17,139,000 sq mi (44,390,000 sq km), with about 3.3 billion people, nearly three fifths of the world's total population. PULSE) |
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