Category: Genebanks

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Review calls for support of Kew genebank

The independent review of Kew Gardens commissioned by Defra is just out. It has some very nice things to say about the Millennium Seed Bank, and quite rightly so.

The work of the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) is particularly impressive, and the MSB has forged partnerships with more than 120 institutions in 54 countries. Kew has advised many of these partners on how to set up and run seed banks for themselves. This has included, for example, the delivery of germination protocols to a network of 38 national seed banks in sub-Saharan Africa; and the use of seeds from 500 species stored in the MSB for restoration and species recovery programmes worldwide.

Which leads to a recommendation that Defra should pull out its wallet.

The MSB’s operating costs over the past nine years have averaged £4.1 million per annum. They were funded until the end of 2009 by the Millennium Commission. The external funding stream that has been going to the MSB to assist in the running costs ceased from January 2010 and Kew will now either have to fund the MSB from its own resources; seek alternative sources of funding, particularly by building the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership; or downsize or even close the MSB. For the reasons set out in Chapter 2, the review team believes the MSB should be of very high priority for Kew, and it recommends that Kew should be given additional interim funding by Defra, which tapers down over three years, to enable Kew to gather the additional funding support that it needs. We recommend that £3 million be given for this purpose in 2010/11 and £1.5 million in 2011/12.

This is not a particularly good time to make a call on the public finances in Britain, but surely the Millennium Seed Bank is too big — and important — to fail. Defra will no doubt find the money. And so they should.

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Rational genebank system’s report card

ResearchBlogging.org Just how far are we from the efficient and effective global system of genebanks that has been on the horizon since at least 1996? Maybe a little closer, thanks partly to efforts by the Global Crop Diversity Trust and Bioversity International to help all those myriad genebanks and their managers to forge a common position. Five years after the Trust began, two of its staff ((Including our very own Luigi Guarino.)) and a colleague from Bioversity have published an assessment of where things stand. ((Khoury, C., Laliberté, B., & Guarino, L. (2010). Trends in ex situ conservation of plant genetic resources: a review of global crop and regional conservation strategies Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution DOI: 10.1007/s10722-010-9534-z)) Bottom line: Good effort, could try harder.

The report is based on 18 crop strategies and 8 regional strategies, undertaken by the Trust in concert with shed-loads of experts in an attempt to collate what is known and what isn’t. From their consideration of all extant strategies the authors isolate eight themes. In their paper they treat each in detail. I have the luxury of picking cherries.

Regeneration is probably the greatest single threat to the safety of wheat accessions held in globally important genebanks.

And what holds for wheat in globally important genebanks holds for other crops and other genebanks too. Keeping what you have alive is crucial, but it isn’t just the lack of skilled staff that is holding things up. Research is needed to know how best to regenerate and multiply some species, especially wild relatives. And of course while regeneration is the sine qua non of a functioning genebank, it is also fundamental to so many other activities, like having enough stuff to send out, gathering the characterization and evaluation data that make stuff worth sending out, and cleaning up the diseases that make stuff not worth sending out. So regeneration is the number one priority.

Number two, for me, has to be information systems, although it ranks No. 5 in the paper. No need to go into details, except to say that the only way out of genebank database hell is to build information systems that allow different searching styles and different social styles alike to find what they are looking for.

And finally, a little something on user priorities. Information plays a part here. The paper says that:

The greatest constraint on utilization of plant genetic resources by researchers, taxonomists, breeders, farmers, and other users of germplasm presented in the strategies is the lack of accession level information … especially for useful traits.

Well, yes. And am I mistaken, or is this a highly disguised pat on the back?

In order to increase use, there is a continuing need for the creation of greater awareness among policy makers and the general public of the value of crop diversity collections and the global interdependence on those collections for agricultural research.

E non solo, as they say in Italy.

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In Jatropha cultivation, small is beautiful, boffins say

It hasn’t really taken all that long for the Jatropha backlash to begin. It is still often…

…claimed to produce biofuel and enhance socioeconomic development while reclaiming marginal and degraded lands in (semi-)arid regions (Francis et al., 2005), without competing with food production or depleting natural carbon stocks and ecosystem services.

But doubts are arising.

…the current knowledge gaps and uncertain economic perspectives, together with competition on the global biofuel market, might drive Jatropha investors away from marginal or degraded lands towards agricultural or lands that are valuable for biodiversity, in order to reduce financial risk.

That’s all according to a paper in Journal of Arid Environments. There’s certainly evidence to that effect from India, according to “ATREE, an Indian environmental research group promoting sustainable development.”

…new research shows jatropha, which has received huge government backing in recent years, yields less than experts had first predicted and is now being grown on fertile farmland — undermining two of its best selling points.

There have also been marketing problems. Listen, from Kenya, to “Mr Joseph Odembo of the Nam Lolwe [Jatropha Caucus] … and a member of the lobby, Action Resort for Change (ARC), the local NGO that invited the international [bio-diesel] agents:”

We have not been able to find a market for the trees which have been ready for the last two years but farmers are still optimistic that one day a good deal will come and they will be able to see the fruits of their labour.

What’s the answer? Is there one, indeed? Well, according to the Arid Environments paper, the problem is one of scale.

…the global hype could be harnessed to increase rural development by considering small-scale, community-based Jatropha initiatives for local use, like small Jatropha plantations, agroforestry systems with Jatropha intercropping, and agro-silvo-pastoral systems.

It wont come easy, though.

Implementation of this model needs important extension efforts through cooperatives and local networks having good insight in local environmental, economic, cultural and social processes. Their assistance in the introduction of Jatropha should start with the communication of correct information on land suitability including potential yield range, risk of yield loss, management practices and possible water competition (Maes et al., 2009), as Jatropha will not yield well on all sites for which its suitability has been claimed (Trabucco et al., 2008). Furthermore, these extension efforts should assist in acquiring plant material at low cost and in the post-harvest processing and product use as well (e.g., multifunctional platforms, see Havet, 2003).

The right sort of plant material, I would add, and not just at the right price. The germplasm collections are certainly out there. But are they being used?