The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) to raise awareness about the underlying threats to and the need for biodiversity conservation.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the first international instrument to deal with issues of ethics and equity with regard to the sharing of benefits derived from genetic resources between those who have conserved them and those who exploit them.

This document provides an overview of the main kinds of agricultural biotechnologies that have been used in the crop, forestry, livestock, fishery and agro-industry sectors in developing countries in the past and that were covered in a e-mail conference which runned from 8 June to 5 July 2009.

Biodiversity measurement is necessary to evaluate conservation alternatives and understand how to maximize biodiversity returns on conservation budgets. In the economics literature, most studies focus on species level diversity. Existing measures based on species' pairwise genetic differences do not perform optimally.

Biotechnology in agriculture has generated a great deal of controversy in recent years. Of the many scientific advances that have occurred in plant breeding since Gregor Mendel conducted his experiments about 150 years ago, crops with genetic modifications seem to have been accorded a unique status.

Authored by MS Suneetha and Balakrishna Pisupati and presented during a side-event at ABS 7, this report attempts to assess and analyze the issues related to benefit sharing, the entry points for discussions on the issues and the possible considerations that national implementing authorities should make before deciding on benefit sharing principles and policies.