By the 1890s, all French scions (grape shoots with buds) had been successfully grafted onto phylloxera-resistant American rootstock. The crop was eventually saved by wine grape rootstock imported from the United States-plants that secreted a sap that thwarted the insects’ attack. Because French grape plants had not built up any resistance to the bug, over just five years, nearly half of French vineyards were lost and neighboring wine-producing regions including Spain, Italy, and Germany were threatened. The microscopic aphid likely hitched a ride from North America to Europe on the boots of a vintner or through an imported plant, and was soon feasting on the roots and leaves of grapevines in Provence. In the late 1800s, for example, a tiny yellow-green insect called phylloxera devastated the French wine industry. That’s why this reservoir of diversity is so valuable.”Ĭountless real-world examples illustrate this point. They have to turn to existing plants that have attributes that they’re now interested in. “And it’s not like they are going to invent genes and traits to address these changes and challenges. “Breeders are constantly having to address these issues of new diseases, new pests, climate change, changes in processed food and in processing techniques, in dietary preferences and nutritional quality-a whole host of things,” she said. The landscape of food has always been in constant motion-but as it become increasingly constrained around a few commodity species, and as new environmental challenges mount, a deep well of genetic varieties is more necessary than ever. The Laboratory has been sending seeds to the Seed Vault about every two years, but this was Greene’s first trip. “They are heavier than what we use at our facility because the seeds we’re sending up to Svalbard are going to be there for quite some time.”
“What facilities around the country will do is look for unique accessions, make sure they are clean and dry, and send them to us here in Fort Collins.”įrom there, Greene and her team repackage the seeds to last, well, forever-sealing samples inside special, extra heavy duty, tri-laminate aluminum foil packets. “We focus on sending material that’s unique to the United States,” she said. It was there, in the chilly recesses of a beige building on the Colorado State University campus, that Greene-the facility’s supervisory plant physiologist and seed curator-and her colleagues prepped seeds for Svalbard. Its impressive repository holds about 80 percent of the plant, animal, and microbial material stored in 17 genebanks spread across the 50 U.S. Greene works at the National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation, the security backup system for all domestic collections-the Svalbard Seed Vault of the United States. For Greene and many of her colleagues, one example in particular underscores the importance of their work. The stakes are extremely high-which is why, for decades, conservationists have gone to great lengths to preserve these diverse varieties. What Greene and her conservationist colleagues deposited during the historic event in Svalbard is genetic material that’s now protected and will, hopefully, help ensure food security for generations to come. These seeds are precious, the foundations of every meal we eat-from produce, pulses, and grains to the feed that nourishes livestock. Co-managed by the Norwegian government, the Crop Trust, and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen), the facility is intended to back up important seed collections from the world’s roughly 2,000 seedbanks. Scientists, farmers, and food companies rely on genetic diversity to breed new varieties that increase yields, make crops more nutritious or climate-tolerant, and mitigate the pests and diseases that ravage plant and animal populations-the sudden, devastating outbreaks that are not dissimilar from our current human pandemic.Īlthough entities throughout the world conserve a wide range of materials for food and agriculture (ranging from baker’s yeast to honeybee semen), seeds are the foundation of most stored collections, and the only material stored at the Global Seed Vault. Over centuries, these efforts have gotten more sophisticated, but a single theme endures: Having access to a broad range of genetic traits allows us to meet the challenges we face in growing and raising food. Since the dawn of agriculture, humans have saved seeds, roots, and other kinds of genetic material, modifying them in attempts to make the foods we consume more prolific, resilient, and delicious.
0 kommentar(er)
