The origins of gene resource conservation can be traced to the 1910's and the interest of agriculturalists in the origin of domesticated crops and in the use of wild relatives of crops in breeding programs. The interest was great enough that by 1924 the Russian botanist Nikolai I. Vavilov founded the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops.2 Before the Second World War the Institute sponsored 180 collecting trips in 65 countries. By 1940 it held about 200 thousand accessions of wheat, cotton, potato, legumes, vegetables, and other crops.3The number and size of crop gene banks has continued to grow dramatically ever since.4