Genebanks

April 13, 2011April 13, 2011

China’s Germplasm Bank of Wild Species gets a visit

GoKunming, which seems to be a semi-official English-language site about the capital and largest city of Yunnan Province in southwestern China, has a feature today on the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species (中国西南野生生物种质资源库) at the Kunming Institute of Botany. It’s a nice write-up, although we would take issue with parts of the following statement:

Why is cooperation between the world’s seedbanks important? Staff at Kunming’s seedbank told us that during the recent social upheaval in Egypt, the country’s seedbank suffered looting (for the jars, not the seeds), which led to the destruction of many valuable specimens. Luckily, the seedbank had sent backup specimens to its partners abroad.

Though there has been extensive damage to equipment, I don’t think any evidence has been presented of the looting of jars from the Egyptian Deserts Genebank, if that is indeed the one referred to, or of the destruction of specimens, valuable or otherwise. And of course, although some accessions stored in that genebank were in fact duplicated, in particular at Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, not all were. But it is nice to see the point about cooperation among genebanks made so clearly.

Just for completeness, the national crop, as opposed to wild species, genebank of China is in Beijing (left). China has not yet ratified the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

April 12, 2011April 12, 2011

Nibbles: Desert legumes, BiH, Seedbombs, Workshops on food security, Mandrake, Productivity, Peppers, Cockles, Cassava

Desert seeds go to Svalbard.
“Two young engineers, Fuad Gasi and Idin Fazlic, are in charge of the bank, which is staffed by volunteers.”
Seedbombs: recipes and legal niceties.
Achieving food security sustainably. Report of a PAR/FAO workshop.
On the other hand, here’s what Australia’s leaders heard about A Food Secure World.
How much do you really need to know about mandrake?
Do rich countries produce more per hectare? h/t GOOD
Pocket guides to chili farming. Might have a wider audience than originally intended.
Collecting cockles is women’s work, at least in Ecuador.
Why would anyone want to eat it when they could use cassava for biofuel instead?

April 11, 2011April 11, 2011

Brainfood: Brazil nut, Cassava relatives, Botanic gardens, Pollinators, OECD, IPM, Community genetics, Insect resistance, Marco Polo sheep, Abiotic stresses, Better climate change modelling

Made in Brazil? Brazil Nut, yes. The genus Manihot, not so much.
The role of botanic gardens as resource and introduction centres in the face of global change. They have one. But they need to be more like genebanks.
Global growth and stability of agricultural yield decrease with pollinator dependence. Analysis of time-series FAO production data shows that more pollinator-dependent crops have lower yield growth and lower yield stability. So both should benefit from more active management of wild pollinators and their habitats. Results can be extended to other ecosystem services but that was a bridge too far for this reader.
Draft Policy Framework for Investment in Agriculture. “The purpose of this document is … to initiate discussion.” Off you go.
Deterrent and insecticidal properties of bean seed (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) whole meal or protein extract incorporated into the diet of Callosobruchus maculatus (F.) (Coleoptera: Bruchidae). To protect chickpeas from bruchid beetles, add bean proteins.
Community genetics: at the crossroads of ecology and evolutionary genetics, a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, which includes …
… Insect-resistant biotech crops and their impacts on beneficial arthropods. The abstract gives nothing away: “The findings … are discussed.”
High connectivity among argali sheep from Afghanistan and adjacent countries means you need international collaboration for conservation. Good luck with that.
Better phenomics and genomics means you can do really cool Genetic analysis of abiotic stress tolerance in crops, and their wild relatives of course. But we knew that.
Five ways of Improving assessment and modelling of climate change impacts on global terrestrial biodiversity: more data, process-based modelling, better understanding of role of community interactions and of the effect of genetic variation, and better functional groupings of species for improved simulations of vegetation distribution.

April 10, 2011

To Serve and Conserve presentations

The presentations given at the Eucarpia To Serve and Conserve meeting are now up on the conference website. Have fun!

April 10, 2011April 11, 2011

Different genebanks, different roles

I feel a little more needs to be said about the video I nibbled earlier about the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) genebank, in particular in light of the questions that were asked at the recent To Serve and Conserve conference about the relative roles of national and international genebanks. Here’s the video again:

I don’t speak Tagalog, but some things are pretty obvious. If you go to 1:57, for example, you get the following shot:

Fortunately, Genesys knows about this IRGC 44503. ((I’m sure IRIS does too, but I couldn’t get it to answer me.)) It’s an IRRI accession, as the IRGC prefix implies:

Now, I understand the need for safety duplication. But for proper safety you’d want it to happen in another country, another continent preferably, and the IRRI and PhilRice are both in the Philippines~~, although on different islands~~. ((They are in fact on the same island, as pointed out by Mike Jackson in a comment. Sorry.)) I can also understand that PhilRice might want a sample of IRGC 44503 to hand for research or whatever. But that looks like a seed sample going into long-term storage, and IRRI is not that far. And I understand there’s a measure of historical contingency involved. But things are different now. There’s Svalbard. And there’s the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. So is it really necessary for PhilRice to do long-term storage of an IRRI accession? Couldn’t they leave that to, well, IRRI? It’s not as if they don’t collaborate all the time.

Does it matter? Does it really matter if some rice accessions are kept in long-term stores in several place? Well, for a start it’s not some rice accessions, but many. And not just rice, but many crops. Maybe only about 20% of the world’s 7.2 million accessions are unique, some of those are not duplicated at all, others many times. If you’re trying to work out how much it would cost to conserve, safety duplicate and make available forever that 20%, rather than the full 7.2 million, it most certainly does matter.