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 talk 1 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.
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!)