Analytic report on the use of DSI on genetic resources for food and agriculture

Within the framework of the 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP 14) that took place between 10 and 22 November, in Egypt, the French Ministry of Agriculture and Food commissioned the Foundation for Research on Biodiversity to prepare an analytic report on the use of DSI on genetic resources for food and agriculture (plant, animal, aquatic, forest, microorganisms, invertebrates).

The main findings of the report were therefore:

• To propose an appellation to replace the term “digital sequence information” with “digital data on genetic resource sequences” or “digital sequence data”;
• To define a typology following the chronology of the bioinformatics protocol for processing sequencer data outputs: raw data, cleaned data, analysed data;
• To list the main applications of this digital data.

The report was launched during a seminar that took place on Monday, 8 October, at the House of Oceans in Paris. The seminar was attended by almost 50 people with different backgrounds (representatives of ministries, diplomats, researchers, industrialists, journalists). The seminar’s meeting minutes and the speakers’ presentations are available on the FRB website.