“If you have a disease, a pest or adverse climatic conditions, we can look for features that serve to combat that disease or that climatic situation, and then create new varieties that can cope with this challenge,” explains Mauro Carneiro, Head of Biotechnology/Embrapa.
One precaution that has already paid off: in 1994, the Kraho indians were able to recover with the help of Embrapa a kind of corn which for three decades had not been grown in the villages in the North and Northeast regions.
That’s the Google Translate version of part of an article on Embrapa’s new genebank in Brasilia, which includes a video. Attentive readers will remember we blogged about that Kraho story some years back. A second example of restoration of genetic resources from a genebank trumpeted on the internet — and TV in this case! — within a few days. One more and we have a trend.