Kew Gardens’ Millennium Seed Bank has reached its target of collecting 10% of the world’s wild plants, with seeds of a pink banana among its latest entries.
Congratulations, and happy birthday Kew! Interestingly, the wild banana in question, Musa itinerans, is also found in a genebank in Thailand, apparently as a breeder’s line, so it may well be useful in crop improvement.
LATER: Ok, this is why I talk1 about genebank database hell. Musa itinerans is in the Musa Germplasm Information System, fourteen accessions of it,2 conserved in vitro at the International Transit Centre, and in China and the Philippines. But it seems it is not in SINGER, for some reason, which is where I first looked for it. And neither of these two sources seem to have made it to WIEWS.
LATER STILL: And 3 specimens in botanic gardens. GBIF disappointing, only a couple of MoBo sheets. Literature suggests it might be a source of cold resistance, and maybe disease resistance too.
Footnotes:
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In our FAO CGRFA study we cited this species as being used for water-logging resistance (INIBAP/IPGRI, 2006 – Global Conservation Strategy for Musa).
We found that for the high priority Musa taxa (including itinerans, a primary wild relative) occurrence data were lacking in online databases. Data were so sketchy that we were unable to do any sensible mapping. We highlighted the need for a detailed ecogeographic survey of this group.
By the way, the study is finally being published formally—currently a summary version for the Commission meeting next week, plus the full version later. Better check those taxon names though—MS Word has kindly ‘corrected’ some, e.g., ‘acuminate’ (just noticed!)