Category: Genebanks

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A focus on farmers

A whole bunch of interesting reports for your delectation today. From our friends Ola Westengen 1, Teshome Hunduma and Kristine Skarbø at NORAGRIC comes “From Genebanks to Farmers. A study of approaches to introduce genebank material to farmers’ seed systems.”

This report reviews strategies, methodologies and projects that exist to facilitate direct access to genebank material for farmers. Based on a literature review, a survey as well as interviews and data collection from key actors in conservation and development oriented seed system work, we trace trends in the field and develop a typology of approaches.

It’s not long, so read the whole thing. But a couple of things to whet your appetite. First, the categorization of approaches:

  • Reintroduction
  • Community Seed Banks (CSB)
  • Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB)
  • Emergency Seed Interventions
  • Variety Introduction
  • Integrated Seed System Approaches

You can argue with it, but I do like a taxonomy to start things off. Second, the data.

…farmers, farmer organizations and NGOs indeed comprise a substantial user group of the CGIAR genebanks, receiving some 7% of the samples, on par with the distribution to commercial sector requestors.

Always good to have the data. And finally, the challenges: (1) reaching scale, (2) achieving long term sustainability, and (3) legal aspects. In particular scaling up, always a bugbear.

The scale challenge is both a question of seed availability and the number of beneficiaries involved. Genebanks are only able to distribute small quantities of seeds and in all approaches described here the seed multiplication step is to a lesser (e.g. PPB) or larger extent (e.g. emergency seed interventions) critical. There is furthermore a need for exploring ways to scale up in terms of numbers of farmers reached. Some of these approaches, in particular PPB and CSBs, are so resource intensive that the number of farmers directly involved in each project is likely to remain limited. On the other hand, the crowdsourcing approach to varietal evaluation promoted in the Seeds4Needs initiative coordinated by Bioversity International represents a promising strategy for large scale on farm evaluation of diverse portfolio of crops.

Susan Bragdon’s work is quoted in the report, and concidentally she has three (count them) things out this month, published by the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO).

  • Are Small-scale Farmers at the Table? Reflections on Small-scale Farmers’ Participation in Global and National Decision-Making: “…six recommendations for how multilateral institutions that host negotiations or dialogues can encourage and facilitate the participation of small-scale farmers.”
  • The Foundations of Food Security – Ensuring Support to Small-scale Farmers Managing Agricultural Biodiversity: “…a rights-based approach supported by governments nationally and internationally [e.g., the Plant Treaty] open broader possibilities of predictable, stable support.”
  • The Evolution of Rights and Responsibilities over Agricultural Biodiversity: “…suggestions on how to create a system that supports the critical role that agricultural biodiversity plays in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.”

The culmination of this flurry of activity from Susan and QUNO is a call to action paper, The Time is Ripe for Governments to Strengthen Sustainable and Food-Secure Farming, in which….

…the Small-Scale Farmers and Agrobiodiversity Dialogue to Action Group (DtA) calls upon the international community to mobilize resources for a more proactive role of the public sector in supporting small-scale farmers, their seed systems and the protection of agricultural biodiversity. Furthermore, the group calls upon national governments to engage in consultation with small-scale farmers to identify what they require in order to effectively engage in activities to support the conversation and sustainable use of biodiversity and to achieve secure livelihoods.

Ok, so there’s a lot to take in here, but if I were to try to encapsulate the take-home message for you, it would be this phrase from the description of the second of Susan’s papers listed above:

…increased private sector interest in agriculture and food systems is reason for equally vibrant governments acting in the public interest.

And international genebanks too, I suppose.

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Never rains but it pours, genebank edition

If running the genebank at the John Innes Institute in the UK is too tame for you, why not check out the job at WorldVeg:

WorldVeg is seeking a highly motivated and experienced Genebank Manager to manage the conservation of the Center’s vegetable germplasm, to lead and conduct research on vegetable genetic resources of both global and traditional crops in collaboration with WorldVeg scientists and partners around the world to assure the safety and duplication of the collection, and to ensure the genetic resources are utilized effectively to benefit the poor in developing countries.

You’d also get to play around with a nifty demonstration garden.

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Brainfood: Banana identification, Donkey domestication, Mouse domestication, African cattle, Pig domestication, Biofuels, Biofortification, Genomics for breeding, Species movement, Crop diversity double, N fixation, Ag commercialization models, Wild beans, Brassica domestication, Teaching biodiversity

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The rain in Spain falls mainly on genebank accessions

The last couple of weeks have been all go. Last week I was at IRRI in the Philippines, but I’ve blogged about that genebank before here, so I won’t say much more about it now, save that they have a cool new automated seed sorter. And of course the breeders whom the genebank serves have been very busy, and successful.

Then this week I visited the Spanish national genebank at the Centro Nacional de Recursos Fitogenéticos of the Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria, just outside the historic town Alcalá de Henares, not far from Madrid. It’s been going since the early 1980s, and it forms the hub of a network of 37 collections spread out all over the country. As such, it aims to provide centralized long-term conservation for the country’s seed collections, as well as managing the national inventory, which feeds data into Eurisco and thence Genesys.

Over the years, they have done a great job of collecting crops all over the country, from people such as these.

Significant gaps remain in their holdings of wild relatives, though, hence our visit. This map, from Genesys, gives you an idea of overall coverage. Wild relative accessions are in red.

Pretty impressive. And the current effort to address gaps in the collections of key crop wild relatives will make it even more so.

In addition to the germplasm collection, CRF also houses a fascinating reference collection of wheat spikes, dating back to the 1950s, whose labelling betrays something of a predilection for taxonomic splitting.

Thanks to Luis Guasch, Lucia de la Rosa, and the whole team for the hospitality, and all the hard work safeguarding Spain’s agricultural diversity.