What are genebanks for?

I’ve spent the past few days in the company of people who manage genebanks, and right off the bat I want to say what good people they are. While I knew some of them individually before, I’ve never seen them gathered together. ((And just what is the collective noun for genebank managers? A coldstore? An accession? No, that can’t be right.)) I was impressed by how friendly, open, collegial and downright pleasant they were. And they have some weighty matters on their collective mind.

One is the very notion of what a genebank is, or ought to be. This arose in part because, at least according to Google trends, interest in “genebanks” and “gene banks” seems to be waning slowly. Is that because people use a different term, like seedbank or seed bank? Possibly so; but I also think that there may be a difference, at least between in the way genebank managers use the terms and the way the general public uses them.

A seedbank contains seeds. It ought also to contain information about those seeds, but the information will generally be related to aspects of the plants from which the seeds came. How and where does it grow, what does it taste like, which pests and diseases does it succumb to and which does it resist; how much water does it need, how much cold or heat can it withstand; phenotypic information. There is also, I think, an idea that the seeds are in the bank to be withdrawn, maybe as soon as the next planting season if things have gone wrong. Farmers and communities may maintain their own seed banks as insurance, but only for a few seasons. Larger seedbanks may be open to a wider community and store their seeds somewhat longer, but essentially they keep just seeds and phenotypic information.

Genebanks too keep seeds and phenotypic information, and make them available, but generally to breeders who want the seeds not for what they are but for what they contain: their genes. Furthermore, in addition to keeping what’s known as an active collection, of material that can be shared on demand, genebanks also keep a collection in long-term storage, and that’s often much larger than the active collection. Because the people who use genebanks are more interested in the genetic traits within the seed, and because of the rapid development of shiny whizz-bang tools to rapidly obtain bucketfuls of genetic information, many genebanks managers now regard gathering, storing and making available genetic information alongside (or even instead of) the seeds themselves an essential trait that genebanks do not share with seedbanks.

They may be onto something. They are certainly bringing to light some very interesting science along the way, much of it directly useful in genebank management. Genetic information is helping to identify samples that are not what they say they are on the label. In many cases genome information can reduce the size of the haystack through which breeders have to search for the needle they want to find. In other cases people are sitting on mountains of information and are actually looking for ways to use those data to improve the value of the collections they manage. In yet others they can use genetic information to gain insights into how samples have changed since they were first collected.

So genebank managers are adding genetic information because it makes the seeds in the genebank that much more useful. And for everyone in the room, there was absolutely no question that the abiding reason for genebanks to exist is to ensure that breeders have access to as much biodiversity as possible so that they can select new varieties that will perform better than existing varieties. Genetic information helps with that process, but would be worthless if the seeds from which it was obtained were no longer available, so long-term storage — in perpetuity, to use their favoured phrase — is absolutely essential.

Here is where it gets tricky. The problem for genebanks has always been funding. They are at the mercy of donor vacillations, and it doesn’t matter whether the source of funding is a philanthropist, an aid organisation or a national government. Support needs to be dependable. That’s why the Global Crop Diversity Trust seemed to be such a good idea. It’s original premise was simple: raise an endowment large enough so that genebanks could be funded forever on the interest. Unfortunately, the endowment has been a long time materialising.

But if the genebank managers see clearly the point of what they’re doing, why don’t donors? Some just have cold feet at the idea of handing a bunch of money over to an endowment and losing control of it. I don’t myself understand how that differs from handing over a smaller bunch of money every year and still losing control of it. Can’t they see that if they could find it in their hearts and wallets to hand over a bigger bunch, they would be off the hook, forever? No more moaning each funding cycle about how donors are destroying the system, just unending gratitude.

Ah, but is it worth it? Yes. The economic case for preserving seeds simply ought not to need making any more. The number of examples in which some “miserable” specimen has added squillions to productivity is legion. And the cost is so small against the benefits that it is a waste of money even to ask for an accurate assessment.

Maybe I’m too skeptical, but I do worry that if donors haven’t funded the endowment yet, maybe they never will. I was with the genebank managers to talk about communication and the need to have a clear idea of whose behaviour you want to change before you try to change it. I closed with two warnings that scientists in particular, steeped as they are in the idea that you listen to the data, need to hear.

The first is from Jonathan Swift: “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”

The second is from Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

I only wish I could work out how the people who aren’t willing to fund genebanks formed that belief, and how their salaries depend on it.