- The world’s largest potato cryobank at the International Potato Center (CIP) – Status quo, protocol improvement through large-scale experiments and long-term viability monitoring. It’s been a long road, but they’re almost there…
- Overcoming Challenges for Shoot Tip Cryopreservation of Root and Tuber Crops. …but there’s a bit further to go for other roots and tubers….
- Conserving Citrus Diversity: From Vavilov’s Early Explorations to Genebanks around the World. …and citrus.
- Seed Longevity — The Evolution of Knowledge and a Conceptual Framework. The road goes on forever.
- The 3D Pollen Project: An open repository of three-dimensional data for outreach, education and research. The road has to begin somewhere.
- Pollen Cryobanking—Implications in Genetic Conservation and Plant Breeding. And we’re off…
Nibbles: Green seeds, Yam bean, Aussie wild tomato, Einkorn trial, US sorghum, Ethiopian forages tricot, Cuisine diversity, Apple catalogue, Hittite crash, Black Death
- Let’s say we wanted to transition to a more local and low-input production system in Europe. What seeds would we need and where would we get them from? The Greens/EFA in the European Parliament have some ideas.
- IITA is pushing the yam bean in Nigeria. Europe next?
- More on that new Australian wild tomato from a couple of years back. With audio goodness.
- The largest ever einkorn variety comparison trial makes the German news. Well, makes a press release anyway. Yam bean next?
- Another continent, another ancient grain: sorghum in the US. Yam bean next?
- The Ethiopia Grass project aims to improve livestock production, food crop yields AND soil quality. The trifecta!
- Nice infographics displaying dodgy data on the most common ingredients in different cuisines. Yam bean and einkorn nowhere to be seen.
- Cool community-created online catalogue of British apples. Looking forward to the yam bean one.
- It was drought that did for the Hittites, not lack of yam beans. Sea Peoples unavailable for comment.
- It was Yersinia pestis from Issyk-Kul that nearly did for Europe in the Middle Ages. Yes, you can study the genetic diversity of ancient deadly bugs and well as that of crops like yam bean and einkorn.
From theory to practice in genebank operations
Do you find the Genebank Standards for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture a little, shall we say, hard to digest? Not to worry, there are now handy practical guides for the application of the Genebank Standards. Which will hopefully make them a little easier to use.
The action steps of the genebank workflow are presented in a sequential manner and provide guidance on the complex steps and decisions required when operating a seed genebank, field genebank, or an in vitro genebank. The accompanying summary charts for the respective action steps underscore the intended use of each practical guide as a handbook for routine genebank operations.
Let us know in the comments what you think.
The Seed Information Database is back!
Readers may remember a post from about a year ago announcing with sadness the imminent demise of Kew’s Seed Information Database (SID).
Well, cheer up. It seems SID is back.
The Seed Information Database (SID) is now hosted by the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (RBGK). SID is a compilation of seed biological trait data, with records derived from measurements and observations on seed collections held in Royal Botanic Garden Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank and from other unpublished and published sources, through donation or abstraction.
Good news for genebanks everywhere.
Nibbles: Mugumu, Gates, Fixation, OSA, USDA, Panicum, Digitaria, Britgrub, Wheat, ICRISAT, Svalbard
- Blog post on the importance of the mugumu tree in Kikuyu culture.
- Alas, no sign of mugumu trees on the Kenyan farm visited by Bill Gates recently. But there were chickens, drought-tolerant maize and mobile phones…
- …and there may soon be crops engineered for nitrogen fixation too, if his foundation’s project with the University of Cambridge comes through.
- Speaking of maize, here’s a nice illustrated story of how the Organic Seed Alliance is helping farmers grow their own tortilla corn in the Pacific Northwest.
- To generalize and contextualize the above, read this USDA e-book on plant collections and climate change.
- Dr Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute just got a grant to study broomcorn millet domestication and dispersal in Central Asia. There may be lessons for present-day adaptation to climate change, says the blurb.
- There are probably lessons about adaptation to climate change also to be had from Kew’s work on fonio and other traditional crops in Guinea.
- I wonder if Kew boffins are also working on bere, perry and other endangered British foods though.
- It’s always nice to see someone first learn about genebanks, and how they can help with the whole climate change thing.
- Meanwhile, in India, ICRISAT gets a stamp, which however doesn’t look very much like India or ICRISAT to me. Plenty of broomcorn millet in its genebank, by the way.
- Plenty of seeds from the ICRISAT genebank in Svalbard, as Asmund Asdal will no doubt point out on 10 February.