Category: Genebanks

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Stairway to maize diversity

There’s a nice article in Rising Kashmir highlighting that region’s cold-tolerant maize landraces as a unique source of genetic diversity. What I liked about it is that it doesn’t condescend to its audience. It’s unapologetically technical and niche, while successfully (I think) striving to be understood by all. That’s rare. The author, Dr Salika Ramazan, argues that long adaptation to Himalayan environments has produced valuable traits for climate resilience and future maize breeding, and advocates for urgent conservation before this irreplaceable diversity is lost.

A quick search on Genesys revealed 302 maize accessions from above 1500 masl in the Himalayas (yellow on the map below), and 62 above 2500 masl (red). Of course, there are many more maize accessions from high altitudes in Central and South America, but their photoperiod adaptation (among other things) is likely to be quite different.

Distribution of high-altitude maize accessions in the Himalayas (from Genesys).
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Nibbles: Fit for Biodiversity, Food value chains, FAO, SeedTracker, Morocco genetic erosion, Pastoralists, Cannabis seedbanks

  1. A conference on biodiversity in agri-food systems. Including agrobiodiversity?
  2. A photo essay about food value chains in India. Including agrobiodiversity?
  3. A few examples of FAO’s work on how agriculture sustains biodiversity. Including agrobiodiversity.
  4. An app to track seeds. And therefore agrobiodiversity.
  5. A warning that 75% of the agrobiodiversity of Morocco’s wheat and barley has been lost in the past 50 years. Ah, so that 75% number is true of something after all. Maybe they could use SeedTracker.
  6. A reminder that pastoralists guard biodiversity. Including agrobiodiversity.
  7. A Genesys for weed. Well, I guess it’s agrobiodiversity.
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Nibbles: Svalbard prize, Rice breeding, Coffee geography, Biodiversity loss monitoring, Spatial data

  1. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault gets the Princesa de Asturias Prize for international cooperation. Time to celebrate.
  2. Celebrating Pamela Ronald and scuba rice.
  3. Celebrating Ohsoon Yun and the geography of coffee.
  4. I’ll certainly celebrate if the approach of the NATURE-FIRST project can be applied to loss of agricultural biodiversity one day.
  5. The World Bank is in a celebratory mood with regards to geospatial and Earth observation data. I’ll join them when they fund a NATURE-FIRST for crop diversity.
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21 things to know about seed systems

FAO has a 6-page leaflet out on “Seed systems – Twenty things you need to know.” It’s well-written and comprehensive. These are the 20 things, in case you were wondering:

  • What is a seed?
  • What makes some seeds better than others?
  • What is seed quality assurance?
  • What does it mean when seeds are “certified”?
  • What are “quality declared seeds”?
  • What work does FAO do on seeds?
  • What do seed policies aim to do?
  • What is seed security, and why is it important?
  • What does FAO do to help farmers after a disaster?
  • Why not just give food instead of seeds?
  • How do seeds help farmers recover after disasters?
  • Where does FAO get the seeds it gives to farmers?
  • How does FAO decide what kind of seed help to provide?
  • How do emergency seed responses help farmers become more resilient to future disasters?
  • What’s the difference between hybrid crop varieties and other types of varieties?
  • Are older, farmers’ varieties better than newer ones?
  • What would happen if we lost a crop variety?
  • How do farmers learn about new crop varieties?
  • How are harsh environmental conditions affecting crop varieties?
  • Does FAO tell farmers which crop varieties to use?

Comprehensive, as I say. Even genebanks get a shout-out:

Crop variety loss also reduces the diversity of our cropping systems, thus making them more vulnerable to stresses. That’s why conservation is so important. By safeguarding inter- and intra-specific diversity of crops in genebanks and through on-farm management of diversity varieties are prevented from disappearing forever, their useful traits are documented, and this diversity remains available for the current and future generations. Conserved varieties are an essential resource for plant breeders, as they can be sources of important traits, such as stress resistance or nutritional quality, to be incorporated into new crop varieties.

Though I would personally have maybe included a nod to the potential direct role of genebanks in seed systems. Feeding breeding pipelines is surely not the only way genebanks can make an impact, especially for so-called neglected and underutilized crops — or opportunity crops as we should now call them I guess.

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Brainfood: Targets, Plant Treaty, Decolonization, Fonio germination, Recalcitrant seeds, Microbiome, Taro seed system