**3. Biodiversity of plant genetic resources**

Biodiversity is the bedrock of food security. The purpose of sustaining a functional biodiversity is to downgrade the threat of genetic erosion of important genetic resources. The protection of our biodiversity is critical as it directly affects food security. Plant genetic resources are at perennial risk of genetic erosion, which leads to loss of valuable genes, concomitantly loss of biodiversity. Some of the elements responsible for loss of biodiversity include climate change, floods, droughts, fire hazards, and urbanization to mention a few [11, 12].

The necessary practices for protecting targeted plant genetic resources, some of which may be harvested for food, in nature are locating the species, describing the status of their conservation, and actively managing and monitoring the populations where they occur in nature [13]. This is particularly critical as the genetic diversity of PGRFA in nature is being eroded by various factors, that is, loss and fragmentation of habitats and extreme weather events that may be linked to climate change [13].

Genetic erosion of plant genetic resources has been problematic both for primordial and modern agriculture and has been broadly documented. Several issues highlighted above, such as natural and man-made disasters are largely responsible for this immense loss. China in 1949 recorded a loss of about 10,000 wheat varieties; the USA in the 1970s lost about 95% of cabbage, 91% of maize, and 81% of tomatoes all to genetic erosion. It is noteworthy to mention that the cultivation of high-yielding variety causes genetic uniformity and is a pointer to the spread of diseases. This has been reported in wine grape and corn blight by the Information Bulletin, ICSC II, 1996.
