It’s a curse, knowing (and caring) too much. Last week, we dutifully nibbled a Spanish-language report that seeds from Peru’s Potato Park were on their way to the Bóveda Global de Semillas de Svalbard. The BBC, equally dutifully, seems to have retailed the same story. But hang on. Are those true potato seeds, in which case I’ll just relax and go home? Or are they potato seed tubers, capable of safeguarding actual varieties, rather than merely a diverse sample of potato DNA? The BBC certainly suggests the former, by specifically mentioning one of the varieties by name.
I had always thought that named potato varieties do not breed true from true seed. so if seeds are being stored, then why bang on about varieties? And if it is seed potato tubers, which do preserve variety characteristics, why are they being stored at Svalbard, where they’ll die pretty quickly?
Someone put me out of my misery.
A greater curse is the curse of unreliable technology. This post was supposed to magically appear three weeks ago. It didn’t. I don’t know why. And I was on the road at the time. No wonder it evoked no response …
The press release starts out with calling this “a major effort to safeguard more than 1,500 varieties”.
A bit of spin, perhaps, but what is really going on is explained on page 2:
“The first stage of the three-year project will involve training conservation farmers or ‘papa arariwas’ in pollination techniques to produce botanical potato seed. This seed will be dried and cleaned, then packaged in foil packages to preserve”
Real seed, as you would have guessed, not varieties. Interestingly:
“Three sets of the seed will be produced. One set will be used by the Potato Park to develop climate-ready varieties of the native potatoes, which are increasingly threatened by rapid changes in weather patterns. The second set will be stored at the CIP genebank in Lima, and the third will be shipped and stored in the Seed Vault.”
Don’t you hate it when Press Releases are available only as PDFs?
More than a bit of spin, I’d say, especially when the press release in question makes much of the specific varietal identities they claim to be preserving.