This web site has been developed and is maintained by the Secretariat of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

The Multilateral System of Access and Benefit-sharing started operating in January 2007. Since then, the Secretariat has developed a set of voluntary information technology tools for SMTA users.

In 2009 the Secretariat, in collaboration with CIRAD, released the first version of Gene-IT, a user-friendly stand alone software application to fill out and generate SMTAs in a semi-automated way. Gene-IT is distributed in CD-ROM and can also be downloaded free of charge from the Treaty’s Website.

In order to facilitate SMTA provider’s reporting obligations, the Secretariat developed and published in November 2010 an information system that allowed the online reporting at accession level for all Annex 1 crops. That first version of the system was designed for the main purpose of implementing the Procedures for the Operation of the Third Party Beneficiary.

Since then, the experience accumulated by the Secretariat of the International Treaty in assisting with the reporting process and the numerous requests and suggestions received from organizations and individual users, have lead to releasing the second version of the System.

The System, of voluntary use, combines SMTA generation and reporting functions. The user may decide to use the generation and reporting tools separately.

The System has a new design and workflow that guides users in a step-by-step process that it is intuitive and easy-to-use. It also offers several additional functions such as the uploading spreadsheet files with listing the Annex 1 material being transferred.

The Secretariat is also working on the development of customized agreed procedures for the transmission of large amounts of data by using standardized data exchange protocols (e.g. XML).

The Secretariat is also developing training materials (i.e. a set of presentations and manuals) and a new help function.

The Terms of Use have been revised and extended.