Crop Genebank Knowledge Base

Genebank management strategies & principles

Risk evaluation

Contributors to this section: PhilRice, Philippines (Gabriel Romero); CGIAR IAU (John Fitzsimon); Bioversity-ILRI, Addis Ababa (Alexandra Jorge); IRRI, Los Baños, Philippines (Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton, Renato Reaño); ILRI, Addis Ababa (Jean Hanson); CIMMYT, Mexico (Thomas Payne); IITA, Nigeria (Dominique Dumet); ICRISAT, Patancheru, India (Hari D Upadhyaya); NCGR USDA-ARS, Oregon, USA (Barbara Reed); NCGRP USDA-ARS, Fort Collins, Colorado (Dave Ellis).

Risk evaluation

Once the current total risk rating is determined, the risk owners and higher levels of management consider whether the level of risk is acceptable. This will determine if additional control efforts or contingency planning should be made. Current technical or financial feasibility will be a factor in making decisions in this regard. However, such constraints should be explicitly considered and flagged so that they can be revisited either when new or cheaper technologies become available, or additional funding can be found to implement them.

Risk treatment

Future course of action should be identified to deal with those risks where the current total risk rating is considered unacceptable, giving top priority to the highest assessed residual risks. The action plan comprises mitigation measures designed to reduce the risk level from High to Medium or Low total risk, by lowering the likelihood and/or cushioning the consequences through contingency planning such as provisions of safety backups of collections or information. Potential preventive controls are suggested in Table 1 and Table 2 that are by no means exhaustive, nor fully and directly applicable to all Centres. They can be amended, enhanced and tailored to each genebank to comprise a set of measures deemed adequate.

Possible contingency measures should also be considered for external risks for which the genebank cannot implement preventive controls and in the event that risks do occur, despite controls being put in place. Table 1 and Table 2 provide suggested controls and contingency measures that can be considered for particular risks.

To present an overall picture of the unacceptable risks and mitigation measures that are relevant to the subject genebank, these can be entered in a worksheet (table for risk management germplasm bank) for a quick monitoring guide.

Monitoring and review

Monitoring and review is concerned with analyzing and learning lessons from:

Risk events or trends that occur.
Changes in the external environment since this was last assessed.
The results of ongoing surveillance and periodic auditing they control.
Mitigating risks that continue to be appropriately designed and implemented as intended.

Responsibilities for monitoring and review should be clearly defined and documented.There should be a systematic consideration of the results to determine if changes to the risk management framework are required.