- Mike Jackson reminisces about 50 years in plant genetic resources.
- Cracking story about taking a crack at cracking the problem of tree seeds.
- CIP asks you to imagine a world without potatoes.
- Satellites on the lookout for pests.
- The food system is broken. Or maybe it’s working just fine, to the wrong end.
- Singing about açaí.
- Pomology, illustrated.
- Livestock data, deconstructed.
Supporting the Application of the FAO Genebank Standards
Reproducing here a post from our work blog, which I co-authored with a couple of friends from FAO.
How do genebank managers know they’re doing all they can to maintain the quality and availability of their collections?
Perhaps the most important tool at their disposal is the publication Genebank Standards for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, produced by FAO in 2014 under the guidance of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the Commission). Generally referred to as “the Genebank Standards,” it is widely recognized as setting the benchmark for current scientific and technical best practices, helping to implement key treaties and conventions, such as the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. But are they actually being followed?
To find out, FAO carried out a global survey of national, regional and international genebanks between August 2017 and January 2018. Roughly 100 responses were received from over 50 countries and from five international organizations; the respondents included genebank managers, curators of collections, documentation officers, as well as other technical genebank staff. The major result that emerged from the survey was that, although the Genebank Standards is generally considered a valuable reference document, more practical technical and operational guidelines are needed to apply its recommendations effectively. Survey results also suggested that some thematic areas of the document required updating (e.g. the use of molecular markers in genebank management).
In response to this feedback, FAO, in consultation with the Global Crop Diversity Trust and technical experts, initiated the development of a practical guide to the application of the Genebank Standards. Key action steps in the workflow of routine genebank operations were identified based on the processes outlined in the document. These action steps aim to simplify its implementation as a quality management tool for ex situ conservation of orthodox seeds, field genebanks, and in vitro collections. In particular, the practical guidelines provide genebanks with a step-by-step process for the implementation of quality standards within a flexible quality management framework that allows customized improvement.
To validate the results, FAO and the Crop Trust organized an expert consultation in Bonn, Germany on 10-12 April 2018. The participants included 16 genebank managers from national and regional genebanks from around the world. These technical experts agreed that presenting the information contained in the Genebank Standards in a more concise and more user-friendly format, detailing the different action steps of the genebank workflow in a sequential manner, would help practitioners and facilitate more widespread adoption of quality standards.
FAO presented the draft action steps to the Intergovernmental Technical Working Group for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Working Group) at its Ninth Session in July 2018. The Working Group invited Commission Members and observers to submit written comments to the Secretariat and requested FAO to revise the document in light of the comments received. The revised draft action steps will be presented to the Commission at its next Regular Session in February 2019.
Based on the Commission’s feedback, it is expected that FAO will finalize comprehensive practical guides for genebanks. These will describe up-to-date action steps and provide tools to facilitate conservation of orthodox seeds, field genebanks, and in vitro collections, respectively. It is also foreseen that similar practical guides for the conservation of recalcitrant seeds, for cryopreservation, and for the storage of DNA samples, will be developed as these become more mainstream, and applicable protocols become increasingly available.
The views expressed in this information product are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Fruity good causes
Genebanks in the cloud
Here’s a half hour podcast on genebanks, which says some slightly strange things but is reasonably accurate overall.
It wasn’t entirely clear to me, but it sounded at the end as if they will be discussing policy issues on the next episode.
Brainfood: Global taro, Gender gap, Eschatology, Cacao domestication double, Soybean epigenetics, Rice domestication, Domestication space, Botanic gardens, Agrarian care, Open seeds, Sustainable nutrition, Broadbean breeding, Resistant beans, Yam environments, Trade networks
- Conserving and Sharing Taro Genetic Resources for the Benefit of Global Taro Cultivation: A Core Contribution of the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees. The first line of defence against Taro Leaf Blight, among other things.
- Female access to fertile land and other inputs in Zambia: why women get lower yields. Because they’re stuck with the poorer soils. I’m assuming there was some control for maize variety, but the damn thing is behind a paywall. LATER: Yeah, they controlled for hybrid vs open pollinated variety.
- Towards a dialogue of sustainable agriculture and end-times theology in the United States: insights from the historical ecology of nineteenth century millennial communes. In other news, it has become necessary to reconcile the apocalypse with sustainability.
- Population genomic analyses of the chocolate tree, Theobroma cacao L., provide insights into its domestication process. Domestication was both good and bad.
- The use and domestication of Theobroma cacao during the mid-Holocene in the upper Amazon. Archaeology says domestication in western Amazon in line with above (somewhere in Ecuador?), but earlier than thought.
- DNA methylation footprints during soybean domestication and improvement. Differentially methylated regions are particularly genetically diverse.
- Major domestication-related phenotypes in indica rice are due to loss of miRNA-mediated laccase silencing. Not so much the genes, as their regulation.
- Phylogenetic patterns and phenotypic profiles of the species of plants and mammals farmed for food. Plants and animals are different.
- Botanic Gardens Complement Agricultural Gene Bank in Collecting and Conserving Plant Genetic Diversity. 6000 taxa in 68 crop genera are in botanic gardens. Check out the rest of the special edition of Biopreservation and Biobanking on agricultural genebanks.
- Plants: Crop diversity pre‐breeding technologies as agrarian care co‐opted? Pre-breeding ignores farmers’ knowledge.
- The Open Source Seed Licence: A novel approach to safeguarding access to plant germplasm. Seeds will find a way.
- When too much isn’t enough: Does current food production meet global nutritional needs? No: grow more food and vegetables.
- Breeding and genomics status in faba bean (Vicia faba). Plenty of diversity to be still used. Pass the chianti.
- QTL Mapping of Resistance to Bean Weevil in Common Bean. Based on a cross between the susceptible Zambian landrace Solwezi and the resistant breeding line AO-1012-29-3-3A. But which Solwezi? I hope there’s a DOI in the actual paper for those who get through the paywall.
- Spatial Multivariate Cluster Analysis for Defining Target Population of Environments in West Africa for Yam Breeding. 7 mega-environments identified, but what I want to know is if any are under-represented in terms of material in the genebank.
- Economic shifts in agricultural production and trade due to climate change. Under mitigation scenarios trade networks for agricultural commodities get more distributed, and possibly therefore more stable. So that’s another reason to mitigate C emissions, you know, apart from saving the planet.