Category: Genebanks

Speaking of breadfruit… Seeds are the … ahem … bread and butter of traditional genebanks: dry them, chill them, and they’ll keep for decades. But the seeds of many important crops don’t play nice. Some — including breadfruit — are recalcitrant, meaning they die if dried and frozen like well-behaved orthodox seeds. For these species, cryopreservation of the right plant part at really cold temperatures is the way to go. It’s the only realistic way to conserve their diversity safely, cheaply, and long-term. It means not relying on constantly refreshing field or laboratory collections that are vulnerable to pests, disease, climate, or simple human error. It’s a complicated subject technically, but if you need a quick introduction, or indeed a quick revision guide, you could do a lot worse that Dr Bart Panis‘ PowerPoint at the recent CGIAR Annual Genebanks Meeting. It’s 60-odd slides, but you can zip through them in 15 minutes and you’ll have the basics.