- Status and future of seed conservation of threatened plants in the post-2020 era. 21% of threatened plants are conserved in genebanks across 44 countries in Europe and western Asia. Not bad, but not good enough. I wonder how many of those 21% will be of interest to breeders?
- How the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture can support effective germplasm exchange: four Colombian case studies. The Plant Treaty can really help a country’s genebanks and breeders drive agricultural development, given half a chance.
- Reconciliation or re-colonization? Critical perspectives on seed banking and colonialism. Indigenous communities need to be careful in collaborating with genebanks and breeders.
- Impacts of climate change on fonio millet: seed germination ecology and suitability modelling of an indigenous West African cereal. Climate change will screw up the germination of fonio in some places, so genebanks and breeders better get cracking.
- Euterpe edulis seed recalcitrance: difficult, yes, but not impossible to genebank. Tricky seed storage behaviour need not deter genebankers.
- Accelerated aging caused diversity and specificity loss in the bacterial communities of Brassica napus seedlings. Genebanks should be careful with their seed aging experiments, because they might screw up the seed microbiome.
- Understanding Biotic Constraints to Taro (Colocasia esculenta) Production in the Derived Savanna and Humid Forest Agroecosystems of Nigeria. Genebanks need seed systems though.
Gaps galore in collards collections
Quick follow-up to my post a few days ago on the recent study of the origin of the collard greens grown in the Moroccan oases of the Draa and Ziz valleys.
Ethnobotanists Bronwen Powell and Abderrahim Ouarghidi used historical texts, linguistics, and Indigenous knowledge in their investigation, but of course it’s also possible to use genetics to figure out where the plants may have came from. Especially as there are plenty of accessions labelled Brassica oleracea var. acephala in the genebanks that share their data on Genesys — just over 1500 in fact.
Alas, that might in practice turn out to be tricky, though, due to the somewhat — ahem — skewed geographic distribution of the accessions in question. The yellow circles in the map below show the approximate locations of those oases on the edge of the Sahara.
Still worth trying, in my view, but really more than anything this should be an encouragement to do some more collecting. Or get more genebanks on Genesys. Or identify more B. oleracea accessions to variety level. Or…
What else has been collected in the Draa and Ziz valleys or thereabouts? Surprisingly little, mainly wheat, barley, chickpea, faba bean and alfalfa. The general location of the valleys is now shown by white squares.
Incidentally, the. map below is where ChatGPT thinks collards are grown around he world. I really have no idea how accurate it is. I hope someone will tell us.
Nibbles: Middle East genebanks, American crabapples, Community seed banks, Indian banana genebank, Legume breeder spotlight, Agrobiodiversity tourism
- The Lebanese and Syrian genebanks in the news. For good reasons, for now at least.
- Wild American apples should be more in the news. And probably more in genebanks.
- Community seed banks could be good news in fragile states.
- Good news for India’s banana diversity. Yes, it now has a genebank!
- All those genebanks need breeders, like Mina Nešić.
- Genebanks are nice of course, but it’s even better news when the agrobiodiversity gets out and about.
When the levee breaks
A piece in The Tribune, an English-language daily out of Punjab, reminded me that we have discussed crop diversity and flooding quite a bit here over the years. The article, entitled “Community seed banks help flood-hit Punjab farmers restore crop productivity,” discusses how an initiative of Punjab Agricultural University supported farmers to establish community-level repositories of crop diversity that are turning out to be useful in recovering from recent flood.
Sharing his experience, Paramjeet Singh, a farmer from Baopur Jadid, said that timely access to quality seeds through the community seed bank enabled him to sow his crop without delay and achieve a yield of around 23 quintals per acre.
Farmers acknowledged that the initiative has significantly reduced reliance on outside seed sources, minimised sowing delays, and improved overall crop outcomes. They are also retaining seed of the new wheat variety PBW 872 for the next season. The initiative has strengthened local seed exchange systems and enhanced community preparedness against climate-related challenges. By ensuring the availability of quality seeds within villages, the Community Seed Bank initiative is contributing to sustainable agricultural development and improving the livelihood security of farmers in flood-affected areas.
A couple of points about this are worth noting.
First, only improved varieties are mentioned in the article, but normally community seed banks will also conserve local landraces. I don’t know if this is the case in Punjab, but I do hope so. As Jeremy put it here all of 15 years ago, in a post on a study of rebuilding cowpea cultivation after flooding in Mozambique, that and similar experiences support “the more general conclusion that seeds already in the local system offer the best chance of restoration.” Although do read the comments to that post. It seems that in another case some farmers weren’t particularly interested in recovering the exact varieties they had lost.
Which brings me to the second point. Which is that I also hope that those community seed banks have good links with the national genebank. This can act both as back-up and as a source of new diversity, as I suggested myself in a more recent post after floods in Pakistan.
Underselling breeding, and conservation
Crops with massive … importance, clear biological upside, and real demand for better genetics — but a system where breeding remains small, underfunded, and structurally difficult to scale.
What crops, you ask? “Opportunity crops,” perhaps? Fonio, say, or Bambara groundnut, or any number of African leafy vegetables.
Those would have been good guesses, but actually I cheated, so no. The word hidden by the ellipsis is actually “economic,” and the quote comes from a Reddit post on coffee breeding. 1
That of course makes the observation even more amazing. As the Reddit poster goes on to point out:
We’ve built a ~$100B global industry that depends on plant genetics… while seemingly allocating only a negligible fraction of that value to actually improving those genetics.
And, I would add, allocating an even more negligible fraction to conserving those genetics (despite the fact that there’s a pretty solid strategy for how to do that). Which goes for opportunity crops too, come to think of it.