Category: Genetic erosion

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Genebanks shenebanks

Why bother building and maintaining huge robotic genebanks, I hear you ask? They’ll just take over the world and we’ll end up having to deal with the Terminator in a few years’ time, no? Well, as it happens there are two pieces today on the Worldwatch Institute’s blog which explain the reasons. Yassir Islam of HarvestPlus says that researchers are “scour[ing] seed banks to find seeds that contain the desired nutrients and then breed these into popular varieties using conventional methods.” And Cary Fowler of the Global Crop Diversity Trust turns to Ug99:

Where do you suppose scientists are looking for a way to deal with the disease? Just as Professor Borlaug did, they are screening hundreds of varieties of wheat to find one that shows resistance to the disease. Where would we turn if we did not have that diversity available in genebanks?

What more do you need? Oh yeah:

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that a third of all genetic resources for food and agriculture have already been lost in the last 100 years.

Right. But at least it’s an improvement on 75%.

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Nibbles: Climate change, Monitoring, Evaluation, Vegetables, FAO newsletters, Guardians

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Too many early warning systems spoil the broth

The EU-funded operation will improve food security of more than 860 000 rural households, over 6 million people. The aim is to boost food production by making improved seeds available to needy farmers and to promote sustainable seed multiplication and certification.

Difficult to argue with the aim of this FAO project in Burkina Faso. One could perhaps offer alternatives as to the methods, but it is difficult to argue with the aim, and with the urgency of the situation. So the only observation I’ll offer — and not for the first time — is that it would be nice if projects of this kind also included a little bit of money for a rapid assessment of whether local landraces are adequately conserved ex situ in the national and international genebanks, and for their rescue collecting as necessary. FAO has a Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture which identifies problem situations such as that currently unfolding in Burkina Faso. But it also has a World Information and Early Warning System on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. One sometimes has to wonder whether the two talk to each other.