September 2014: The Marshall Islands has ratified the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGR) and will become a Party on 13 October 2014, bringing the number of Parties to the ITPGR to 132.

The Marshall Islands will join Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Palau and Samoa as Parties to the treaty from the southwest Pacific region. In 2009, the Pacific region placed the germplasm collections maintained by the genebank of the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees (CePaCT) in the Treaty’s Multilateral System of access and benefit-sharing. [ITPGR Press Release (in Spanish)]