You may remember Typhoon Xangsane, which hit the Philippines in deadly fashion just over a year ago, on 28 September 2006. It was given the Tagalog name Milenyo, or Millennium.
What you may not know is that one of the victims of Milenyo was the national genebank of the Philippines — the National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory — which is housed by the Institute of Plant Breeding in Los Baños. ((The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is also in Los Baños, of course, but although some of its facilities were also affected by Milenyo, its genebank was not damaged.))
Some of the results of the typhoon can be seen in the photo essay published by GRAIN not long after the event. Some 70% of the national collection was declared lost and the rest taken next door to IRRI for emergency storage under “black box” conditions.
I visited the genebank last Friday, and the recovery has definitely made some progress, including as a result of some timely financial assistance by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. But there’s still some way to go: much of the collection is still at IRRI for safe keeping.
In this picture, Nestor, who works at the genebank, shows how high the water got on that fateful day. You can also see, closer to the ground, the mark left by the mud which flowed through the building.
And this is a shot of the room which houses the four cold chambers. The two on the left are back in action, but the two on the right have still to be repaired, although the government of the Philippines has apparently now committed the necessary funds.
Just to give you an idea of the force of the mud and water that rampaged through here, have a look at this picture of one of the cold-rooms that still needs to be fixed. The water actually lifted it off the floor and wedged debris underneath it, which has still to be removed. You can see that one end the cold chamber is still some 10 cm above the level of the floor!
I don’t have any good photos of what remains of the field collections, but what could have been dug out from under the mud has now been saved and re-established. Efforts are now underway to duplicate the field collections of things like taro, sweet potato, yams, bananas etc. in the tissue culture lab. That’s located in the same building as the seed cold-stores, but, fortunately, on the second floor, so it escaped the flooding, though there was some minor damage to the roof. For ultimate safety duplication of the seed collection, the authorities are considering Svalbard.
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