Quality standards for in situ agrobiodiversity conservation published

This just in from Dr Jose Iriondo of the Depto. Biologia y Geologia, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain. Do provide your input if you can.

One of the deliverables of the AEGRO project (AGRI GENRES 057), ((That would be “An Integrated European In Situ Management Work Plan: Implementing Genetic Reserves and On Farm Concepts.” Coincidentally, we also heard yesterday about a series of NordGen conferences discussing in situ conservation under the title “Genetic Resources in Protected Areas.”)) funded by the European Commission, DG AGRI within the framework of Council Regulation 870/2004, is the formulation of quality standards for genetic reserve conservation of crop wild relatives (CWR). The quality standards are a guide containing a set of criteria for the establishment of genetic reserves within existing protected areas and a set of management standards to optimise the efficacy of genetic reserves as a tool for the conservation of CWR.

The current version of these quality standards is available. We are interested in knowing you opinion. Please send us your comments and suggestions. We would appreciate it if you would also disseminate this email to members of the Crop Wild Relatives community and Protected Areas community in your country for additional feedback.

Papaya protected from virus by wild relative

Papaya ringspot virus is the major limiting factor to production of pawpaws in many countries. There is a GM “solution”, but there’s now news that after 50 years of trying researchers have transferred resistance by conventional breeding from a wild relative, Vasconcellea quercifolia. I ran this by a colleague who’s an expert on papaya taxonomy, genetics and breeding and he had this to say:

I am very happy that they seem to have succeeded in their long and difficult work. And this is excellent news for all developing world papaya growers. GM was not the right solution because each virus strain implied a costly transformation (including patent rights), and the virus is highly variable.

More diverse wheats for the future

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Council, one of the UK science-funding agencies, has announced a GBP7 million grant “to increase the diversity of traits available in wheat via a comprehensive pre-breeding programme”. They’re going to be plumbing “ancient sources of wheat germplasm” and creating lines and markers that will allow breeders to breed performance traits into elite lines. All the data and seed lines will be stored centrally and made freely available as part of a coordinated global effort. One of the partners in the project is the University of Nottingham, which issued its own press release, which gives a bit more detail. For example, one of Nottingham’s tasks will be to transfer genetic material from wild relatives of wheat, because “due to modern breeding practises there is not sufficient genetic variation in modern wheat varieties to obtain the increases in yield required”. Another task will be to breed for “Nutrient use efficiency … the amount of grain yield that plants produce for each kilo of nutrient available to the plant”.

Which reminds me, wasn’t it the University of Nottingham’s Professor Donald Grierson who promised, back in the early 1980s, that nitrogen-fixing wheat was just over the horizon? Seems like it still is.