Tourism Administration hosts digital fair

2024/12/06

Deputy Foreign Minister Tien Chung-kwang attended the Taiwan-Asia Vegetable Initiative (TAsVI) Seed Homecoming Ceremony Dec. 3 in Taipei City to celebrate the conservation and utilization of vegetable biodiversity in Asia.
 
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the event was hosted by the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg), headquartered in southern Taiwan’s Tainan City.
 
During the ceremony, WorldVeg representatives returned vegetable seed accessions collected three decades ago in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines to their countries of origin. It also featured dialogue among academic, agricultural and industry leaders on sustainable germplasm use through public-private partnerships, as well as discussion on a biodiversity rescue plan to benefit more regions.
 
In his remarks, Tien said the ministry is honored to implement the TAsVI initiative in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and WorldVeg. By building a regional network to share knowledge and resources, the vegetable germplasm project plays an instrumental role in promoting biodiversity in the region, he added.
 
As a founding member of WorldVeg, Taiwan is committed to working with other members and like-minded countries to promote agricultural development in the Indo-Pacific in line with the integrated diplomacy approach, the deputy minister said.
 
Echoing Tien’s remarks, WorldVeg Director General Marco Wopereis thanked the government of Taiwan for its generous support of the TAsVI initiative and called on the public to pay more attention to the fast disappearance of vegetable germplasm. Southeast Asia holds the most abundant vegetable variety in the world, including some endangered local species, he said, urging countries around the globe to step up efforts to preserve these treasured food sources.
 
Created in May 1971 by Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, the U.S. and the Asian Development Bank, WorldVeg holds the largest public vegetable gene bank on Earth. TAsVI was proposed in response to the U.N. Food Systems Summit held in 2021, which called for action to safeguard vegetable diversity, the MOFA added.


Source: Taiwan Today (https://taiwantoday.tw/index.php)