Category: Brainfood

There is nothing particularly new about the idea that the stuff genebanks conserve should be used.

For decades, plant genetic resources specialists have pointed out that conserving crop diversity is only half the job. If that. The other half is getting that diversity to the people who can use it. Yet the first bit has proved considerably easier than the second.

A new special issue of the journal Plant Genetic Resources is a useful reminder of how difficult that problem remains, and of what it might take to address it. I think we have included many of these papers in Brainfood over the past few weeks, but it’s worth exploring the story they collectively tell.

The starting point is not encouraging. A review of 20 national genebanks found widespread weaknesses in funding, management, information and safety duplication. Another analysis found substantial gaps and duplication in national collections, reflecting a history of collecting that was often opportunistic rather than strategic.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Several papers describe how to do the traditional job better: a monitoring and evaluation framework for identifying strengths and weaknesses, a robust set of performance metrics, and how seed-viability monitoring can be made more efficient by tailoring it to individual crops. Yet the experience of Sudan’s national genebank shows that even well-managed collections can be devastated by war, making safety duplication and international cooperation essential.

So big problems remain, despite the solutions that are being developed, and they matter. There isn’t much point talking about using genetic diversity if we cannot keep it alive, know what we have or protect it from disaster.

But suppose we solved these problems. Suppose national genebanks were adequately funded, efficiently managed, securely duplicated and well documented.

What would we have?

Very good collections of seeds.

That is not quite the same thing as useful collections of seeds.

This is where Cary Fowler’s argument in Reimagining the Role of National Genebanks comes in. Fowler argues that national genebanks should put greater emphasis on facilitating experimentation and use, particularly by farmers. The existence of a wider international conservation system gives them room to do so. Assuming that itself is properly funded, of course, but that’s another story.

Let me repeat: this is not a particularly new idea. Fowler – and others – have been saying it for a long time. The problem is getting it done.

Thankfully, again there are encouraging signs from other papers in this special issue.

One describes how Germplasm User Groups in five African countries increased farmers’ knowledge of genebanks, improved access to crop diversity and encouraged farmers to exchange diversity with one another. A companion study shows how farmers can evaluate large numbers of accessions under their own conditions and identify material that is useful to them, making national genebanks veritable drivers of crop diversification.

A study of Kenyan sorghum makes the point particularly clearly. Farmers evaluated 2,041 accessions, selected 393 with preferred traits, and subsequently chose 46 for seed saving and further evaluation. Their selections were not random. They were what farmers liked the look of.

That is more interesting than simply saying that farmers were given access to seed. Farmers identified what they actually valued.

A genebank knows where an accession came from and how to conserve it. It cannot necessarily tell us whether it will be valuable to a farmer facing a particular combination of drought, pests, soils, labour constraints or market opportunities. Farmers can.

The genebank therefore needs to be part of a process of discovery.

And this exposes the real problem. There isn’t much novelty in saying that genebanks should move beyond conservation towards use. The question is how.

Implementation requires more than a change of attitude, though that is certainly important. It requires information, relationships with breeders and researchers, equitable mechanisms for working with farmers, and institutions capable of supporting experimentation and distribution over time.

It may also require changing how we measure success. A genebank can be extremely successful at conserving thousands of accessions while most of its diversity remains effectively invisible to farmers. Is that a good genebank?

The final paper in the issue, on a descriptor system for in situ conservation, points gingerly towards a still broader vision in which diversity conserved in genebanks is connected with diversity maintained in farmers’ fields and natural populations.

We all know that preserving options is not enough. The challenge is to build a system capable of discovering which options are useful, getting them into the hands of people who can put them to the test, and helping them turn diversity into something that makes a difference.

The real measure of a genebank is not just how many options it preserves, but how effectively it helps society discover and exercise them. There are many ways of doing that. This special issue explores a couple. Let’s find lots more.

After all, genebanks have options.