Category: Genebanks

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It’s official: genebanks valuable

You may remember that back in the summer we blogged about a project to assign a monetary value to the Greek genebank. Well, although the project’s website says nothing about any results yet, a video has surfaced which does give some numbers. Here’s the money shot:

greece

And that’s just insurance value. Add to that productivity benefits (which unfortunately are not given in the film), and divide by what it costs to run the place (idem), and you find that “the comparison is favourable — the benefits far far exceed the costs, which means that having the genebank, investing in the genebank, maintaining and developing the genebank, is a desirable policy.” Well, that’s kinda expected, but it’s good to hear it from a Professor of Economic Theory and Policy. We all, I’m sure, look forward to seeing the spreadsheet. Because yeah, sure, money isn’t everything, but it does talk. Especially, these days, in Greece.

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Horticulture CRSP response on drying beads

Kent J. Bradford, Peetambar Dahal and Brenda Dawson of Horticulture CRSP have responded at length to the comments made by Robin Probert and Fiona Hay on their factsheet promoting the use of Zeolite as a possible alternative to silica gel to dry seeds. Many thanks to them all for taking the time to engage in this debate. Please read the rebuttal in full, it’s very detailed and will be of great interest to anyone who keeps seed healthy for a living. However, if I were to be forced to pick a couple of quotes as take-home messages, they would be these:

At present, drying beads are probably economical only for high-value vegetable seeds or germplasm repositories, but there are simple ways to utilize drying beads in forced-air drying systems that could be adaptable to larger seed or commodity volumes, such as in combination with large plastic grain bags that are coming into use.
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We believe that drying beads should be of particular interest for seed banks in developing countries where power outages make continuous operation of refrigeration and dehumidification equipment problematic. We expect that drying beads combined with hermetic containers could largely replace dehumidification of large storage rooms in seed banks. Enclosing a small quantity of beads in foil packet or glass jar with a seed sample would be a great solution for local seed banks that may not have the drying equipment that Robin mentioned.

Which are not altogether dissimilar conclusions to the ones we originally came to, but as I say, read the whole thing and make up your own mind. It would be great to hear from anyone out there that has experience of using these drying beads, whether in a genebank or other context. If you do, or know anyone who does, leave a comment below.

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Nibbles: Potatoes, Quinoa, Biofuels, Raisins, Cherokee heirlooms

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Describing Nordic apples

Oh dear, here’s another agrobiodiversity documentation project that we’ve missed. Over the past few years NordGen has been supporting the Norwegian Genetic Resource Centre in describing apple varieties. That much I can make out in the Google translation of the original Norwegian web page describing the project. But not much more than that. For some reason, the translation is much worse than is usually the case. Maybe it’s the technical language. Anyway, I don’t think there are any data online yet, but when they are, they may or may not be integrated into the database of Danish apple varieties that NordGen manages, complete with handy key. Which is also in English.

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India gets its PGR data online

nbpgrI’m not entirely sure how we missed that data on India’s enormous germplasm collection is now online. While this is welcome, I think it’s fair to say that NBPGR’s PGR Portal still needs some work in terms of user experience. It took me a while to figure out, for example, that if you type a letter under “Crop/Plant Name,” in Passport or in Characterization and Evaluation Search, you get a list of crops beginning with that letter, which you can then choose from. 1 Once you do that you get a list of taxonomic names to choose from, but you can only select one at a time to do your search. And why no rice data at all? There is a nice way of looking at the distribution of different character states for each characterization and evaluation descriptor, but no mapping facility. And you can’t use the portal to order germplasm. To do that you have to fill in a form, which makes no mention of the International Treaty on PGRFA or its SMTA, and email it in. And there are some funny restrictions on use: “All users can search and see the desired information. only registered users can copy and download.” But I couldn’t find a way to register. So, good to see, though clearly a work in progress. Will follow its development closely, and hope to see it link up with Genesys in due course, joining the CGIAR, European and US genebanks.