Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Dirk Enneking is only marginally impressed by all this unique identifier stuff:
While the use of unambiguous identifiers to track reference materials is a sensible idea which should be mandatory, the assignment of yet another set of identifiers does not solve the headache that there are a lot of accessions whose origin is obscured due to poor documentation of their itinerary.
What’s needed? I’ll let Dirk tell you.
Trevor Williams, one of the key early figures in the movement to conserve crop diversity, has passed away at 76. Mike Jackson has done a great job of summarizing Trevor’s pivotal contribution to the field over at his blog. Many have left touching tributes, including a number of people whose careers Trevor was instrumental in getting off the ground. I’m proud to be in that category. Mike is also working on obituaries for the Daily Telegraph, and for Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution, to both of which I’ll be sure to link in due course. The funeral will be held on Wednesday 22 April at 13:30, at St Chad’s Church, Handforth, Cheshire. Trevor’s sister Wendy has asked that a donation be made to the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew in lieu of sending flowers. Further details on Mike’s blog.
Mike Jackson, indefatigable blogger and former manager of the IRRI genebank (among other things), is on a mission.
I’m on the editorial board of Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. I have proposed to the Editor-in-Chief that any manuscript that does not include the germplasm accession numbers (or provenance of the germplasm used) should be automatically sent back to the authors for revision, and even rejected if this information cannot be provided, whatever the quality of the science! Listing the germplasm accession numbers should become a requirement for publication.
Draconian response? Pedantic even? I don’t think so, since it’s a fundamental germplasm management and use issue.
As regular readers will suspect, we’re totally behind Mike’s pedantically draconian suggestion here. We’ve said much the same thing ourselves on occasion. We’ve even taken it a step further and suggested globally unique identifiers for each genebank accession. Well, not entirely coincidentally, Genesys has just announced a major new feature along these lines:
Genesys database was upgraded to allow for enhanced handling of archived accession data. Accession records in Genesys are assigned a Universally Unique Identifier and are accessible with Persistent Uniform Resource Locators.
A step in the right direction? Over to you, genebank data geeks.
A smidgen of good news from the Pacific island country of Vanuatu, recently hit so cruelly by Cyclone Pam. This just in 1 from Roger Malapa, who’s in charge of the various field genebanks at the Vanuatu Agricultural Research and Technical Centre (VARTC) on the beautiful island of Santo, which was apparently less badly affected than others.
Minor damage to the banana collection but overall, everything is fine at VARTC and Santo. Yes there is enough material in the multiplication plots, mainly the root crops. I have just selected an early maturing variety on February: two-month harvest. We are harvesting our cassava now so cuttings can be prepared.
SPC’s Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees (CePaCT) does hold duplicates of some of these collections in vitro. But you can never have enough safety duplication in the Pacific.
Here’s what a bit of the root and tuber crop collection at VARTC looked like a few years ago when I last visited.
An old friend, Frederik van Oudenhoven, and his friend and colleague Jamila Haider, are deep in the proofs of what looks to be a wonderful book. With Our Own Hands “tells, for the first time, the cultural and agricultural history of the Afghan and Tajik Pamirs, one of the world’s least known and most isolated civilisations”. Should be a great read, with stunning photographs to accompany the local recipes, essays, stories and poetry. Better yet, generous donors are allowing 1800 copies to travel back to the Pamirs to be given to communities, schools, cooks and libraries.
If you’re interested, you should pre-order. Details here.