Category: Genebanks

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Sharing and genebanks

Gathuru Mburu, coordinator of the African Biodiversity Network in Nairobi, gets interviewed by IPS about AGRA and all that. He 1 says a lot of sensible, though not particularly new, things about the Green Revolution approach to African agricultural development.

What we need to do in Africa is to promote ecological farming, promote farmer varieties of seeds and even support or pass laws that support local farmers and their indigenous plant breeding innovation.

True, if perhaps not the whole truth.

And in India, there are so many people who have realised that the way to save the population of India is not going chemical, but going back to the natural ways, the ecological farming systems. And they are reclaiming, they are recuperating the seeds and the culture around the seeds and they are bringing them back [into use] and they are sharing.

We have to bring back that culture. It’s not just the seeds but the culture around the seeds. It’s the value of sharing — in the corporate world, there is no sharing, but in Africa in our own indigenous cultures, seeds were not sold, they were shared.

Interesting that about sharing. Though I think that particular culture is alive and well in Africa. I wonder if he would extend it to the international level. Or maybe there are limits to sharing? But let’s explore further the bit about recuperating.

At the moment, what is happening in Asia is that farmers are actually going back, retracing what they have lost in terms of biodiversity. And it is an uphill task because the knowledge of managing that biodiversity is gone. Because the elders who have that knowledge are no longer there. The people who are farming today have grown up with monocultures; there are very few people who can take farmers back in Asia, back to where they came from before the Green Revolution.

An uphill task. Recuperating seeds is not an easy thing. They have to look for them, sometimes they may have to even buy the original seeds from the few people who still have the original varieties. And all this is happening because they lost their indigenous seeds to the Green Revolution, which favours monocultures of improved seeds only.

Well, what about genebanks? Recuperating seeds is what they’re there for. People may need to look no further than Muguga, where the Genebank of Kenya is located, to get back the seeds they lost. Or something like them anyway. Assuming they were shared with the genebank in the first place.

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Amazonian myth-busting

You may remember a piece in SciDev a couple of years back which justly celebrated EMBRAPA’s genebank. There was an brief, intriguing statement towards the end:

This has been done by several indigenous communities — such as the Krahô, Guarani and Indian tribes from the Xingu river basin in Brazil — that approached Embrapa asking for primitive plants seeds that no longer germinate. The species were important not only to their agricultural system but also to their cultural rituals.

I had heard of this “restoration,” of course: a great story, dutifully trotted out when it is necessary to give an example of direct use of genebank materials, one not involving breeders. But it emerged during the meeting I’m attending that the conventional narrative is not quite correct. It turns out that the seeds that were “returned” to the Krahô had actually not been collected from them, but from a neighbouring tribe, in Tocatins. Ok, it is still direct use of ex situ conserved material by indigenous communities, but somehow not as resonant as formerly, at least for me. I hate it when that happens.

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Rare breeds at risk of disease

BBC News says that “regional breeds of sheep face a heightened risk of disease because of their tendency to remain together in one location”. It is summarising a report from The Sheep Trust, which was founded during the epidemic of Foot and Mouth disease in the United Kingdom in 2001. That’s important.

What the Trust’s report seems to be saying that when there is an outbreak of disease, the regional, heritage, breeds are vulnerable because they are concentrated in a single geographical location. But that does not put them at greater risk of disease. It puts them at greater risk of being culled as part of government’s policy-based response to the disease. If the policy is to slaughter all animals within, say, 5 km of an affected farm, regardless of whether they have the disease or not, then yes, geographical concentration is a threat to the breed. But it isn’t the disease as such that is the threat, it is the policy response. It is even possible that the policy would wipe out flocks that contain genetic resistance.

What’s the answer? Given that regional breeds are interesting precisely because they are adapted to a small region, simply spreading them about might not be much of a solution. Gene-banking? Well, that’s where we came in: The Sheep Trust is an outgrowth of the Heritage Genebank. So what exactly do they want?

“We are strongly recommending that new measures are put in place to protect these important genetic resources now that their vulnerability has been so clearly demonstrated,” says Professor Dianna Bowles OBE, founder and Chair of The Sheep Trust.

No further details are forthcoming. How very frustrating. Maybe all they want is government money for the sheep genebank.

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Critically endangered cassava wild relative delays rotting

Here’s something else I learned at this workshop I’m attending on the state of plant genetic resources conservation and use in Latin America:

Dramatically delayed PPD [postharvest physiological deterioration] was found in Manihot walkerae, a wild relative of cassava found in Mexico and USA (state of Texas) (Fregene and Mba 2004). An accession of M. walkerae (MWal 001) was crossed extensively to elite cassava varieties. A single successful genotype was found with delayed PPD. The storage roots of the hybrid remained intact a month after harvest. Backcrosses of this hybrid to elite progenitors of the CIAT cassava gene pools and selfed (S1) populations were made for genetic mapping of the delayed PPD traits.

This came up during a discussion of the importance of collecting and conserving crop wild relatives. I had no idea the Manihot genus went as far north as Texas. Walker’s manioc turns out to be extremely endangered:

Until recently, it was believed that this species was represented in the U. S. by a single plant in the wild, discovered in Hidalgo County in 1990. In 1995, Walker’s manioc was located in three different areas on the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge in Starr and Hidalgo Counties.

It is known from only a couple of populations in Mexico. I don’t give much for its chances in the wild. But there is material in the San Antonio Botanical Garden. And some of its genes are now in some cultivated varieties.