Category: Genebanks

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Crop genebanks in the Global Biodiversity Outlook

Seed banks play an important role in conserving the diversity of plant species and crop varieties for future generations. Among the most ambitious programmes for ex situ conservation are the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, initiated by the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and its partners worldwide, which now includes nearly 2 billion seeds from 30,000 wild plant species, mainly from drylands; and the complementary Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which has been constructed in Norway, close to the Arctic Circle, to provide the ultimate safety net against accidental loss of agricultural diversity in traditional gene banks. The vault has capacity to conserve 4.5 million crop seed samples.

That’s from the section on genetic diversity from the CBD/UNEP Global Biodiversity Outlook 3, just out (pp 51-53 of a large pdf). And very welcome it is too.

Some of it is not particularly well done, but one is surprised to see it done at all. It would have been nice to have had more examples of genetic erosion than this estimate for rice in China, for example:

…the number of local rice varieties being cultivated has declined from 46,000 in the 1950s to slightly more than 1,000 in 2006.

And what does this mean exactly? Who cultivates wild relatives of rice?

In some 60 to 70 per cent of the areas where wild relatives of rice used to grow, it is either no longer found or the area devoted to its cultivation has been greatly reduced.

Probably something has been lost in translation. On the positive side of the conservation ledger, there is the assertion that:

For some 200 to 300 crops, it is estimated that over 70% of genetic diversity is already conserved in gene banks, meeting the target set under the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation.

This figure is much quoted, but I’ve never fully understood how it was arrived at.

Anyway, as I say, at least crop diversity and its ex situ conservation is in there. And the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture gets a mention. We should be grateful for that.

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Nibbles: Meat, GMOs, Fungi, Africa, Aid, Artichon, IYB, Rare onion, Hummus, Fig

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Nibbles: Allanblackia domestication, Rampion census, Mali reforestation, Indian sacred groves, Oysters, Seaweeds, Breeding organics, EMBRAPA, Fisheries bycatch, Writing NUS proposals, Nutrition mag, Biofortification

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Nibbles: Conservation, Women, Subsidies, Bees, Microbes, Rhizobia, Genebanks, Chicken history, Nordic genebank

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UK genebank still threatened

Perhaps because a general election in the United Kingdom is days away, the debate over the future of HRI Wellesbourne, which we noted here almost six months ago, is beginning to be heard above the din. ((And thanks to Colin Tudge for making it audible to me.)) HRI (Horticulture Research International) is one of the last surviving bits of UK horticultural research. It also houses the Genetic Resources Unit, the UK’s primary vegetable genebank. Warwick University, which owns and operates HRI, has plans to merge it with a Life Sciences division, possibly using the land more profitably to build a housing estate.

Much of the discussion is about the loss of jobs, the loss of expertise, the loss of competitiveness and so on. These are hugely important topics, on which I don’t feel qualified to comment. Then there is the apparent duplicity and callousness of management at Warwick University, which does have a reputation for its strength in “business”. On balance, though, it does seem to be just a bit short-sighted for governments to promote food security, exhort people to eat more nutritious food, and then stand by while one of the few places still able to deliver both is closed.

Personally, I’m not optimistic. Warwick prices everything, values nothing, and acts accordingly. But more idealistic people than me are beginning to stir.

Charlie Clutterbuck, who among his many other talents runs a successful website on sustainable food, has devoted several pages there to information about Wellesbourne, including links to a Petition and a Google Group, that is a huge repository of information.

It would be premature to judge either the election or what the winners will do about HRI. Horticulture Week, a trade paper, asked the key political contenders whether they would intervene to prevent the loss, and if so how. None of the replies is particularly edifying, but that’s hardly surprising. ((It’s the second question on the page.)) Governments of all stripes talk about the need for research to enhance food security, and some of HRI’s science may yet find a new home. However it currently looks as if the foundations of breeding, the genebank and the agricultural biodiversity it contains, are being allowed to decay. Maybe Luigi’s right.

Let it close, I say. Just transfer the contents to some place where its long term conservation and availability is guaranteed, then let it close.

All the politicos would have to do then would be to support long-term conservation somewhere else and take advantage of shared access to enjoy the benefits of someone else’s efforts.