You may remember a post a few days ago about submergence-tolerant rice. Our friends at IRRI have been kind enough to explain to me where the gene in question — sub1 — came from.
I hope I get this right. It seems the immediate parent for IR64-sub1 was from the cross IR49830, which in turn came from the cross IR22385, made in 1978. The source of the gene at the time was a line called FR13A, which was derived from a germplasm accession called IRGC 8887. That was acquired by IRRI in 1963 from India, but with no further passport data.
If you want to get an impression of the complexity of the pedigrees of modern varieties, below is the one for IR64-sub1, with IRGC 8887 highlighted in yellow, thanks to the pedigree visualization tool that IRRI has been developing (click to enlarge).
It’s a great illustration of the reason for the Multilateral System of access and benefit sharing being put in place by the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. In a bilateral system, such as the one envisaged by the Convention on Biological Diversity, how would you work out the contribution of IRGC 8887 — or indeed any of the other germplasm involved in the pedigree — to the overall success or otherwise of the final product?
Rather than start with the policies we may instinctively love and want, this pedigree shows us that we should begin with what we want to achieve, such as flood-tolerant rice, work backwards from there, and ask ourselves what policies will be needed to achieve such this rice, or UG99-resistant wheat, or low-toxin lathyrus, or….
Were we to do this, the discussion about “Access and Benefit-Sharing” would take on a rather different tone. And, it would be a far shorter discussion! (That alone, would be a benefit.)
I am interested on your pedigree display, what software do you use to display the pedigree? how to obtain that software
Please inform me
For your kind attention on this matter, thank you very much
Dear Ayi,
Thanks for asking. I am sorry, but I do not know, as the data were obtained from IRRI. However, I believe that there are several open-source pedigree-mapping tools available. Try looking at the Generation Challenge Program portal.