CIP Board honors outgoing Director General


The Board of Trustees of the International Potato Center (CIP) has dedicated the CIP Biodiversity Complex to Hubert Zandstra, the Director General, who is retiring at the end of April 2005 after 14 years of service.

Many members of Peru’s diplomatic corps, representatives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Agriculture and national organizations of Peru, donor representatives, Board members and staff attended the ceremony, which took place on 14 March 2005.

“Hubert has long been interested in conserving and repatriating varieties of potatoes, sweetpotatoes and other roots and tubers,” said James Godfrey, the Chair of the Board. “He was instrumental in establishing the biodiversity complex so it is a fitting tribute to him that after 14 years as Director General of CIP we dedicate the complex to him.”

Renamed the Hubert Zandstra Biodiversity Complex, the genebank was opened in 2001 and now maintains more than 28,000 accessions of 282 species of potato, sweetpotato and other Andean root and tuber crops under state-of-the-art conditions. CIP holds this important collection in trust under an agreement with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.  “We are committed to its conservation and characterization on behalf of the international community, and to its fair and unrestricted availability,” said Zandstra.

Dr. Zandstra was the driving force in the design, development and funding of the complex, planning for which started in 1998. “This is indeed a very emotional moment for me,” said Zandstra. “The Biodiversity Complex provides a much needed home for the diversity of root and tuber crops that ensure tomorrow’s food security and the livelihood and quality of life for several billion people around the world.”

Dr. Zandstra recalled the special effort it took to complete the facility; the financial risk CIP took, the strong support from its core donors and in particular the special support from Japan, which made the construction possible, and the World Bank for helping to equip the facility. “Peru and the region now have a first class international quality facility that will safeguard the biodiversity heritage of this region,” he said.
 
The CIP facility, along with many others in developing and developed countries, form an international network of genebanks holding plant genetic resources as global public goods.  Use of these collections is guided by principles of access and benefit sharing of the Convention of Biological Diversity. The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture recently enacted this convention as international law.  Peru has formally adopted this Treaty and thus became the first country to do so in the Andean region.

Dr. Zandstra retires on 30 April, to be succeeded by Dr. Pamela Anderson, CIP’s present Deputy Director General of Research. Commenting on Dr. Zandstra’s tremendous contributions to CIP, James Godfrey said, “In Hubert's vision he realized CIP could not stay just as a commodity center. He established CIP as a center for natural resource management incorporating successfully social science with biological and natural science to develop research priorities and sustainable systems to help communities in vulnerable areas.”

Dr. Orlando Olcese, Peruvian Board member, cofounder of CIP and representative of the Agrarian University of La Molina, Peru, spoke lengthily and entertainingly on the origins of CIP and Dr. Zandstra’s contributions. He stressed the importance of the collection, the Andean region’s and especially Peru’s important contribution to the collection. “The original objective of the center was to keep the enormous biodiversity of the potato in Peru for the benefit of humanity,” he said. “Hubert Zandstra has clearly understood the importance of this task and the building you are looking at today is a testimony to his efforts to conserve potato germplasm.” The renaming of the complex will also serve as a fitting tribute and reminder of the tremendous contribution that Hubert Zandstra made to the development of CIP during his long and fruitful tenure.