Category: Genebanks

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A new genebank for the ages is set for ages

Great news from the opening ceremony of the new Future Seeds genebank in Palmira, Colombia on 15 March:

The Bezos Earth Fund pledged US$17 million for Future Seeds, a new CGIAR genebank inaugurated today. The new genebank will bolster global efforts to safeguard the world’s future food supply.

This genebank is truly next-level:

Future Seeds is the most advanced facility in Latin America and is expected to become the first ever platinum-level LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified genebank building in the world. Its Data Discovery and Biotechnology Lab will use big-data technologies to mine the genebank using the latest in genetics to document the range of possibly useful traits in the current collection. Other breakthrough technologies across genebanks include drones and robotic rovers, which are helping analyze crop characteristics in the field more rapidly, and the use of artificial intelligence to enable collectors to identify potential biodiversity hotspots in nature.

Here, check it out for yourselves:

And here’s an overview of the collections from Genesys (beans in red, cassava blue, forages green).

Full disclosure: we also support the place at work.

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Bright future for Future Seeds

For the past few years, the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT has been building a beautiful, spacious, up-to-date, energy-efficient building to house its genebank on its research station at Palmira, Colombia. The old building was just no longer fit for purpose. Future Seeds will be inaugurated next week, on 15 March, and it’s already been getting some attention in the press, which I’m sure will ramp up over the next days. Watch out for more on the Alliance’s social media. One of the fun things the genebank is involved with, and which will no doubt be highlighted during the celebrations, is a collaboration with X’s Project Mineral on the robotic characterization of bean varieties in the field. Congratulations to all at Future Seeds, and very best wishes for the, well, future.

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Want to regenerate vegetables for CGN?

Interesting to see the Dutch national genebank outsource the regeneration of some of its vegetables to the private sector:

…CGN is looking for greenhouse growers who have expertise and greenhouse space available for the paid cultivation of vegetables (e.g. tomato, lettuce, spinach, melon) for seed production. The number of plants to be grown per seed sample varies per crop and ranges from 10-80 plants per seed sample.

Will be interesting to see if the market is there.

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Nibbles: Zimbabwe breeder, Indian genebank, Zambian genebank, Chinese genebank, Pakistan & Uzbekistan, Manchester planting

  1. Sorghum and millet breeder honoured in Zimbabwe. Always good to see.
  2. Germplasm evaluation efforts of Indian national genebank make it into the mainstream financial press. Also very good to see.
  3. Zambian national genebank does some much-needed safety duplication. More good news.
  4. Possibly good news, hard to say: Russian news agency on what seems to be a new wild rice genebank in China.
  5. Always good news to see two countries agree to collaborate on genetic resources.
  6. Manchester viaduct gets a greenlift. Good to see it, despite no genebanks being involved.