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Quality management in genebanks

You may remember a nibble a few weeks back about CIP’s ISO accreditation for its germplasm acquisition, management and distribution operations. The press release stated that:

This is the first time that a genebank has gained accreditation anywhere in the world.

I was a bit skeptical about this initially, as I knew that some European genebanks had also put in place a formal quality management system. But, on reading about the subject on the website of the Dutch genebank, it seems that what they have achieved is certification, which I have a feeling is quite different to accreditation. Maybe some expert out there will put me out of my misery.

Anyway, I was reminded of all this by a paper just out in Theriogenology which looks at managing the quality of the 127,479 samples in the US swine germplasm collection at Ft Collins.

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Italian silk-making

We’ve blogged several times about silk-making in Africa, but this is somewhat closer (at least physically) to home (at least for now). Smithsonian Magazine has a short article on sericulture which includes a reference to a museum devoted to the subject in Como. Turns out that northern Italian city used to be a hub of silk-making. Who knew.

Incidentally, we’ve also blogged about butterfly farming before. And there’s a post just out at mongbay on what they’re doing at the Iwokrama reserve in Guyana. But an article in The Independent describes something altogether more grandiose: “the world’s biggest ‘walkthrough butterfly experience.'”

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Goji lovers threaten devastation

The UK government is warning that illegal imports of goji (Lycium barbarum) plants threatens commercial potato and tomato crops with destruction. Goji, tomato and potato are all members of the family Solanaceae, and apparently “bugs” could come in on the clandestine gojis. According to one advisor, “the retail value of British tomato production is £150m, and potatoes are worth more than that, so the size of the industry that is under threat is pretty massive. If some bugs were to arrive here, they would be devastating.”

The Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate destroyed my entire stock of pepino (Solanum muricatum) in a former life because of some viral threat, even though the plants they confiscated initially tested negative. It’s easy to think that these “invading pests and diseases” threats are just crying wolf, but all the evidence suggests that intensive plantings are indeed very vulnerable. Of course, why that should be so is another matter …

I’m not sure how the UK government plans to sniff out every goji plant, but Sir Mick Jagger and Kate Moss, goji enthusiasts, presumably have plans to cope. Let’s hope proposed imports get up to speed soon, and don’t carry the bugs.