- The potential effect of megafaunal extinctions on modern conservation of horse chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum. The extinction of large seed-dispersing mammals (i.e. elephants) may explain why horse chestnut failed to recolonise Europe after the last ice age, pointing to assisted migration as a conservation option.
- Mapping melliferous tree species in Kenya via one-class classification with hyperspectral unsupervised domain adaptation. Hyperspectral remote imagery and fancy maths can accurately identify and locate Kenya’s honey trees, potentially supporting both conservation and beekeeping. Brave new world. Elephants not involved.
- Everyday agroecologies in the Mixteca Alta, Mexico: gendered knowledge and practices in homegarden agroecosystem management. Women’s knowledge helps sustain homegardens as reservoirs of agrobiodiversity and climate-adaptation spaces, embedding many interesting wild and cultivated trees, along with much else, in wider systems of knowledge and resource management.
- Integrative DNA barcoding and multimethod species delimitation reveal marker performance in the genus Ficus L. (Moraceae). Takes on the old taxonomic problem of where one fig species ends and another begins. Ficus is an especially resonant group for today’s tree-themed roundup: taxonomically challenging, ecologically consequential, economically and culturally important, tied to famously specialised pollination relationships. “Integrative” means the usefulness of a DNA marker must be tested against other evidence and against the particular boundaries one is trying to recognise.
- Chloroplast phylogeographic analysis guides the source tracing and conservation strategies of the endangered Magnolia kwangsiensis Moving down one biodiversity level, mapping maternal genetic structure helps identify appropriate seed sources for conservation and restoration, rather than treating all populations as genetically equivalent. Next comes feeding the seeds to passing elephants.
- Development of a simple and easily interpretable cultivar identification system using 18 insertion/deletion (InDel) markers in Japanese pummelo (Citrus maxima). Really simple markers can identify Japanese pummelo cultivars, and even reveal clues about their parentage.
- К 100-летию отдела генетических ресурсов плодовых культур ВИР. (On the 100th Anniversary of the Fruit Crop Genetic Resources Department of VIR). A century-long institutional case study in tree (ok, and shrub) conservation at scale: some 19,000 fruit, nut and berry accessions now held in field genebanks across ten Russian field stations, each sited in the climate zone that suits what it conserves.
- Cryopreservation strategies for trees: Leveraging organogenesis and somatic embryogenesis for effective conservation. Combining ultra-low-temperature storage with making shoots or roots from an explant tissue and making embryo-like structures from non-reproductive cells offers ways to emulate seeds when the real things cannot be easily stored in the usual way, field genebanks cannot be guaranteed to last 100 years, and there are no elephants around.
Data is not the destination
Mike Jackson’s account of the early molecular work at IRRI’s International Rice Genebank is a nice reminder that the idea of the “genomic genebank” (as he calls it) is not as new as it may sounds. In the 1990s, RAPD and AFLP markers were already being used to identify duplicates, reveal genetic structure and, more ambitiously, to predict which accessions might possess useful traits. It’s the continuation of the trajectory I traced in my recent post on descriptors: from names and human-scored traits to photographs, digital phenotypes, molecular markers and now genomic information, each adding a layer of information that makes the collection more searchable and usable. The question keeps shifting from “what do we have?” to “which of what we have might be useful?”
Jackson’s story is also a key piece of the argument I tried to make in another recent post: preserving options is only the beginning. More, and better, information makes options easier to discover, but discovering an option is not the same as exercising it. The harder question is what happens next: how do we turn knowledge about what’s in a collection into actual selection, testing, breeding, adoption and impact? Data can open the door to better use of genebank collections. It cannot walk through it for us.
And there is a danger here. As our information about genebank collections becomes ever more layered, richer and more precise, it can start to look as though we’re solving the problem of use. We are not. We are solving the problem of finding possibilities. That’s only one part of the journey. A genomic prediction is not a breeding line; a photograph is not a phenotype under farmers’ conditions. The distance between knowing an option exists and actually exercising it still has to be travelled. That is a social and institutional process as much as a biological and technological one, and it starts only when the search is over.
From preserving options to exercising options
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.
Brainfood: The diverse lives and times of crop diversity
- Herbaria viva: proto-genebanks of Mendel’s contemporaries in Moravia. The early 19th century living plant collections of Moravia (the world Mendel grew up in) were a kind of proto-genebank, systematically maintaining and circulating crop diversity decades before genetics had a name.
- Saving evolutionary time: Conflicting planetary temporalities in the genetic diversity debate, 1967–1980. Looking back 50 years, and 50 years after the Moravian proto-genebanks, a historian of science traces how Otto Frankel and Erna Bennett, sounding the alarm on genetic erosion in the 1960s-70s, articulated two competing visions of time and responsibility for safeguarding crop diversity, one rooted in development, the other in collective stewardship of evolution itself.
- Utilization and conservation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture in China: a systematic review of genebanks and farmers’ seed systems. From history to present-day infrastructure. In China, genebanks and farmers’ seed systems have developed together, but gaps between formal and informal conservation remain. Otto and Erna unavailable for comment, alas.
- The effect of crop genetic diversity to food security among smallholder farmers in the global south and the role of community seed banks: a narrative literature review. Here’s the evidence on how community seed banks shape food security for smallholders, but could do more. That’s the informal system at work for you, Erna would say.
- How community seed banks contribute to climate-resilient seed systems: evidence from Ethiopia, Malawi, and Nepal. Speaking of which, a companion study looks at how community seed banks function in practice, finding they do bolster local seed security and climate adaptation, but with real limits: patchy variety availability, uneven quantities, and occasional genetic erosion of their own.
- Varietal development and rice yield growth in India: assessing IRRI’s germplasm contribution. A new assessment of the contribution of IRRI germplasm to Indian rice breeding comes in at around 11% of annual rice yield growth from 1966 to 2021. That’s the formal system at work for you, Otto would say.
- Improving low-pH and high-aluminum field tolerance in alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.). Also on the breeding front, screens of genebank collections and their derivatives for field-level tolerance to difficult soils bear fruit. Or rather, leaves.
- FAIRness at all costs? Practical limitations in applying the FAIR principles to plant genetic resources data. And finally, a reality check for the data side of all this. Applying the FAIR principles to plant genetic resources data isn’t as straightforward as the mandate suggests, with a number of practical friction points standing between the ideal and actual implementation.
Nibbles: Kurdish genebank, Ghana genebank, PABRA, Ubu, Beyond genebanks
- Kurdistan inaugurates a new genebank in Sulaymaniyah, which Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani calls one of Kurdistan and Iraq’s most important national projects.
- Ghana complements its national collection at Bunso. The new facility further north will improve drying, processing and conservation, while giving northern farmers and breeders closer access to crop diversity.
- Three decades of African bean research partnerships and networking have helped turn a staple crop into a vehicle for improved nutrition, livelihoods and climate resilience.
- In the Philippines, eight promising purple-yam accessions combine yield, sensory quality and market appeal, with Villasis 2 producing up to 60 tonnes per hectare in trials. Does it need a network next?
- However, executive director of Seed Savers Exchange Mike Bollinger’s call in Food Tank’s to carry seed diversity forward extends stewardship beyond formal institutions: Indigenous communities, farmers, gardeners and seed libraries all have a role in keeping crop diversity alive and used.