Category: Genebanks

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Oldie but goldie story of sweet potatoes traveling back to NZ

The Māori kumara would have been lost were it not for the efforts of a Yen, who collected 617 kumara varieties from all over the world during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1963, when the collection became too big for the DSIR to maintain, Dr Yen arranged for its safekeeping in three gene banks in Japan. Interest in the collection was revived in 1988 at an ethnobotanical conference organised by the DSIR. Members of Pu Hao Rangi, a Manukau-based Māori Resource Centre, journeyed to Japan and brought back 9 New Zealand kumara varieties, 4 of which were identified as pre-European varieties. These are now cultivated by several Māori groups.

I came across this feel-good story of genebank use today in connection with something else I was doing, and I was sure I’d at least pointed to it before on the blog. Too heart-warming not to have done so. Alas, I can find no evidence to that effect, so here goes. There’s a bit more about what happened in a Bioversity proceedings volume from 2001:

Dr. Douglas E. Yen of the New Zealand National Research Institute for Crops collected about 600 sweetpotato landraces from the Pan-Pacific area (Yen 1974), including some New Zealand landraces. When Dr. Yen retired from the institute, the New Zealand government decided not to maintain his collection. The U.S. and Japanese governments, who were afraid that this precious collection might be lost, took over its management in 1969. Now 362 accessions of the Yen collection are preserved in our genebank at the National Institute of Crops Science (NICS).

The collection put together by Dr Yen was of great historical significance, as he based his pioneering monograph on the ethnobotany of the crop on it. It would be nice to know if it’s still around, and where. Unfortunately, there are a number of institutes in Japan conserving sweet potatoes, and I can’t figure out which one is the National Institute of Crops Science. Anyway, here’s what happened next:

The Maori Chiefs Conference decided to send a delegation to visit Japan and bring back their landraces. On 18 November 1988, four Maori chiefs visited our institute for a special ceremony turning over their sweetpotato landraces back to them. Among our Yen collection, we returned nine accessions (Y-500, Y-501, Y-502, Y-503, Y-504, Y-507, Y-508, Y-512, and Y-513) to the Maori chiefs. Since then, the Maoris are preserving these landraces as a precious gift from their ancestors.

Now, I would have said that the National Institute of Crops Science is what is now known as the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences (NIAS), but entering those accession numbers in their database returns sorghums, so maybe not. But I’m looking into it, fear not.

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Nibbles: ICARDA barley, Trade wars, Aquaculture risks, Local vs organic, Chicken genetics, Dog origins, SSEx health, Diversity loss

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Nibbles: Banana to SPC, Urban livestock, Ag & nutrition, Nutrition data, PPB, Brazil nut certification, Indian beer, Sheep genome

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Nibbles: De Schutter, Madagascar beans, Beer!, Cocktails!, CIAT strategy, Segenet, FGR, Risotto again, Domestication, Quinoa, Medieval workplan, Late blight

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The future of genebanks unfolds, a bit

The potential benefits of recent developments in DNA sequencing technologies to both collection management and use will also be explored during the course of the project.

That was from an article a couple of days ago on the future of the UK’s vegetables genebank. Well, we learned yesterday that for rice, at least, that brave new world is almost at hand:

…access to 3,000 genomes of rice sequence data will tremendously accelerate the ability of breeding programs to overcome key hurdles mankind faces in the near future.

That would be DNA sequences from 2,466 of the International Rice Genebank Collection’s (IRRI) accessions, plus 534 accessions housed at the CAAS genebank, amounting to 13.4 terabytes of data. This begins the long road to sequencing the whole IRRI collection of about 100,000 accessions, the rationale for which was recently set out:

In this paper, we will discuss how genotyping and sequencing can be integrated into the activities of a modern gene bank to revolutionize the way scientists document the genetic identity of their accessions; track seed lots, varieties, and alleles; identify duplicates; and rationalize active collections, and how the availability of genomics data are likely to motivate innovative collaborations with the larger research and breeding communities to engage in systematic and rigorous phenotyping and multilocation evaluation of the genetic resources in gene banks around the world. The objective is to understand and eventually predict how variation at the DNA level helps determine the phenotypic potential of an individual or population. Leadership and vision are needed to coordinate the characterization of collections and to integrate genotypic and phenotypic information in ways that will illuminate the value of these resources. Genotyping of collections represents a powerful starting point that will enable gene banks to become more effective as stewards of crop biodiversity.

Alas, the news came a few days too late for the Pahiyas Festival:

Clearly, rice is the main inspiration of this delightful affair. The rice grains, rice plants and rice seedlings on display may all seem the same, but a closer look will reveal that they are not. Some seeds are longer, some are rounder and some are lighter in color than others, reminding us of just how rich and diverse our rice varieties are.

Maybe next year.

Meanwhile, if you want to celebrate instead by cracking open a nice bottle of wine from the Quinta do Crasto estate in Portugal, well, they’re using high-resolution genotyping there as well to figure out just exactly what clones they have in their fields. What’s that you say? You don’t drink wine? How about a nice bar of quality heirloom chocolate, also thoroughly genotyped, then? Truly the future is upon us.