Category: Genebanks

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Madeira genebank seems OK

While our sympathy goes out to the residents and tourists on Madeira, who have had to cope with the worst storms since 1993, we are pleased to have had some goodish news from our friend Eliseu Bettencourt. He managed to speak to colleagues at the CEM-UMa (Centre for Macaronesian Studies – University of Madeira) and was assured that colleagues and the ISOPlexis Genebank were OK, despite the terrible floods on Saturday 20 February. “The only thing that happened to the Genebank was a power cut for a few hours,” and that had no effect on the normal functioning of the cold rooms.

That is good news for the genebank and its staff. I wonder, though: is there a safety duplicate of the ISOPlexis collection at Svalbard, or anywhere else?

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Nibbles: Irrigation squared, Saffron, Chickpeas, Coastal trees, Cucurbits

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Crop improvement in the news

Two stories of collaborative crop improvement — past, present and future — and the genebanks that underpin it to end the week with.

From an IRRI press release out today on IRRI’s collaboration with the Philippines:

Filipino farmers have adopted more than 75 IRRI-bred high-yielding rice varieties since 1960, have greatly improved their fertilizer and pest management strategies, and are implementing water-saving technologies.

It is telling that a particular point is made of the Filipino material in the IRRI genebank.

…in the International Rice Genebank housed at IRRI, 4,670 rice samples from the Philippines are conserved, including 4,070 traditional varieties, 485 modern varieties, and 115 wild relatives — all are available to share with Filipino farmers and scientists.

And from USDA’s Agricultural Research magazine, Feb. 2010 edition:

Of 1,768 heirloom wheats submitted since 2005, only 78 (or 4.4 percent) showed resistance to Ug99 at the Njoro site. Still, the prescreening led to identification of more Ug99-resistant wheat accessions than would’ve been achieved from sending randomly selected accessions for testing, says Bonman. This is evidenced by the fact that 7 percent of wheat lines resistant to U.S. races showed rust resistance in Kenya, yet only 1 percent of randomly selected accessions did.

I’ll be travelling for the next couple of weeks and blogging may be sparse.

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The tribe of genebankers gets a visit

Peter [Curran] meets the botanists who won the lottery. Seed conservation used to be rather marginal to the main scientific activity at The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. That is, until, the scientists who preserve seeds for future generations asked for and received 30 million pounds.

It’s a BBC programme and you have 7 days left to listen to it. It provides an interesting insight into a particular, albeit unique, genebank — if you can get past Mr Curran’s sardonic attitude.

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Save seeds, Kenyan tells Japan

Wangari Maathai, tree-hugger and board member of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, has been in Japan seeking Japan’s leadership for the conservation of agricultural biodiversity, in advance of the Nagoya meeting of the parties to the Conference of Biological Diversity in October.

“If we don’t protect what we have, you never know what the scientists of tomorrow will need” to allow people to produce crops that could not grow before, she said, adding, “That is why these diversities are important.” She talked about her visit to a Kyoto temple where she learned the Japanese word “tomoiki,” which refers to the concept of coexistence with nature, and said it is “something the world needs to learn.” Maathai became widely known for adopting the Japanese word “mottainai” — loosely meaning “You should save it” — in trying to promote awareness of environmental protection among Japanese people.

Nice word, mottainai.