The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria, is one of the fifteen research centers in the CGIAR, a global agricultural innovation network, committed to solving the complex challenges in the world’s broken food system. The CGIAR advocates for a world free of poverty, hunger and environmental degradation.
To celebrate the International Day for Biological Diversity, Professor Michael Abberton, Head, Genetic Resources Center, IITA discusses the crucial roles of genebanks in the conservation, distribution and utilisation of genetic resources to promote a sustainable future for food amid global threats to agriculture such as climate change as well as new pests and diseases. Professor Abberton obtained his BSc in Botany and PhD in plant cytogenetics from the University of Manchester. Before joining the IITA, he was Professor of Public Good Plant Breeding and Director of International Development at the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS), Aberystwyth University.
Flora IP (FI): In brief, genebanks conserve genetic materials. Can you explain in full, what a genebank is?
Michael Abberton (MA): A genebank is a place to conserve the diversity of any plant (or animal). When we think about crops, we consider the diversity of the different seeds for the crops. We try to conserve the spectrum of genetic diversity for the crop, including various types of crops from different parts of the world, for example, as seed in a gene bank.
It is a collection of the diversity of any particular species.
FI: There are genebanks in all CGIAR centers and at national levels around the world. Why are genebanks important?
MA: CGIAR centers have genebanks to conserve the diversity of their mandate crops, to develop more productive agriculture in the face of climate change and other threats. However, genebanks do not focus solely on the conservation of genetic resources. Genebanks also make these genetic resources more easily utilised, for example, in breeding programmes for the future of agriculture. Genebanks do a lot of work on characterising the genetic resources in their collections to consider, for example, how they look, how they grow in the fields, how they differ from each other in the fields and how to describe their variations. To do this, genebanks now use DNA based techniques to describe the genetic differences in their collections. This makes genetic resources more useful for breeders and researchers around the world who wish to study the genetic resources or include them in the development of new varieties.
It is essential to maintain genetic variation of crops because it would be needed in the future to face the challenges to agriculture, such as climate change, and new pests and diseases. There is not enough variation in the current varieties grown, and they would not necessarily be suitable in the future.
FI: The IITA’s genebank conserves germplasm of its six mandate crops: banana/plantain, cassava, cowpeas, maize, soybean and yam. Can you provide an overview of the genebank? For example, how is the germplasm collected? How is it stored? Who can have access to it? Are the sources of the germplasm recognised or rewarded?
MA: Let me first say that we have many other crops apart from those and we have a number of what we call underutilised crops, particularly legumes which are indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa like Bambara groundnut and African yam bean. With regard to the mandate crops, our largest collection is cowpea; we have more than 15,000 different types (accessions). We also have more than 5,500 different accessions of yam.
Collection. Over the past three decades, we have collected genetic resources from different places, especially around sub-Saharan Africa. We still do collections of landraces. We do that with national programmes and Ministries of Agriculture. We identify sites that have important diversity of these materials and collect relevant samples. This means that we add materials to what we have. This allows us to conserve more materials which may be threatened in some way. This also ensures that we have more materials to distribute to those in need.
Storage. There is a salient distinction between crops that typically reproduce as seed: cowpea, maize, soybean, and clonal crops that typically reproduce vegetatively: banana/plantain, cassava and yam. Seeds are dried stored in cold rooms at -20C for long-term storage and 4C for medium-term storage. Cowpea, maize and soybean are dried, dehydrated and stored for decades. We monitor the viability of seeds and regenerate in the fields when the viability falls below 80 per cent of its original level. We use the medium-term store continuously for seeds we supply to requesters. Cassava and yam are maintained by annual planting and harvesting in the fields. Banana and plantain accessions are maintained as a standing collection in the field. All these clonal crops are also conserved in vitro as tissue culture plantlets. In the last few years, cryopreservation has been developed to preserve these crops, particularly cassava. Cryopreservation is the ability to keep the crops at the temperature of liquid nitrogen. For both seeds and clonal crops, we clean them, to make sure that they are free from bacteria and viruses.
Distribution/Access. Distribution is a significant part of what we do. We distribute materials – seed, tissue culture plantlets – to anybody who requests them to advance food security. This could be for breeding, research or training. We distribute these materials without charge. In other words, if anyone makes a request, we let them know if we have the materials available and we send to them. We mostly send materials to universities, research institutions and breeders, amongst others, within sub-Saharan Africa. The details of our collections are available on the IITA website and also on the Genesys web portal coordinated by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Requests can be made online and will involve the use of the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA).
Recognition/Reward. During collection, we take the passport data, which is everything concerning the site of the collection – the GIS coordinates and site description, amongst others. The accessions are subsequently characterised in the field using the descriptor list (the list of the descriptors for that crop). We do not document farmers’ names. Farmers are not rewarded in any direct sense. Of course, their reward comes indirectly from access and benefit-sharing under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) discussed below and the new varieties that they get to grow.
FI: What is the relationship between the IITA’s Genetic Resources Center and international instruments such as the ITPGRFA, Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV)?
MA: We have a very close relationship with the ITPGRFA under Article 15 of the Treaty, which covers the CGIAR centers. Before the adoption of the ITPGRFA, the CGIAR centers collections were designated as ‘in trust collections’ with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). What this means is that the collections were held in trust by the centers for the rest world. Now, the collections in the CGIAR centers, including IITA, are still in trust collections, but they are part of the Multilateral System. Under the Multilateral System, materials that we send out from the gene bank go with the SMTA in line with Article 15 of the Treaty. We do not generally deal with the CBD or UPOV.
FI: What is the relationship between the IITA’s Genetic Resources Center, other CGIAR Genetic Resources Centers and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault?
MA: We have established coordination across all the CGIAR genebanks, called the genebank platform, coordinated by the Global Crop Diversity Trust (or Crop Trust). They have an endowment fund which contributes a lot of the funds that support the routine operations of genebanks, but we also get support from the CGIAR. As such, we all work very closely. We are on a common platform; we have common reporting and regular interactions. We also have joint projects, for example, cryopreservation mentioned earlier and work on seed longevity. We also cooperate on safety duplication and storage. Since our collections are valuable, we do not just keep them in one CGIAR center. They are duplicated and stored in different genebanks to prepare for any emergencies. For example, we send our maize seed to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico, and we send our legumes to the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia.
We adopt another level of duplication where we send our seed collections to Svalbard, the Global Seed Vault, in the north of Norway. It is not only the IITA and CGIAR centers that store materials there. Many countries around the world also send seed there as backup storage. In practical terms, it was used by the International Center for Agriculture Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Syria when they lost access to their genebank. They got their materials back from Svalbard. That is an integral part of the global system of genetic resources. At IITA, we aim to have 100 per cent of our seed sent to Svalbard. At the moment, we have about 80 to 90 per cent of our seed stored there.
FI: What is the relationship between the IITA’s Genetic Resources Center and national genebanks around sub-Saharan Africa, such as Nigeria’s National Center for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology (NACGRAB)?
MA: We have a lot of interactions with NACGRAB. Sometimes we exchange materials when we work on the same crops, although NACGRAB does not work a lot on the crops that we work on because it has a much more extensive range of crops. We have also been involved in training their staff and helping source some of the equipment that they require. We work more with NACGRAB than the other genebanks in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly because of our proximity. However, we still have interactions with the other genebanks. We have had joint projects, we have acted as safety backups, and seeds from the IITA gene bank has been used directly for recovery from disasters and other similar situations. For example, we worked on a project on securing materials from national genebanks across sub-Saharan Africa funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which finished some years ago. Following the genocide in Rwanda, we were involved in providing seeds to farmers. We had to work with intermediaries for multiplication and dissemination because we deal with small quantities of seeds. Similarly, after the flooding in Southern parts of Nigeria some years back, we sent materials to farmers there. In the future, we intend to work more with national genebanks. They are upcoming projects that could facilitate that.
FI: Are emerging technologies like digital sequencing/genomics and gene editing relevant to genebanks?
MA: One of the hot topics in genebanks and the ITPGRFA is ‘digital sequence information.’ This includes the question as to how much genomic information can be used (for example in variety development) independently of the actual accession? There is a lot of concern in some countries that companies can obtain genetic information without using germplasm. That information could be developed to breed new varieties. As a result, they could circumvent the access and benefit-sharing fund. Indeed, this was unresolved at the last governing body meeting of the ITPGRFA where a subscription system was suggested to replace the current methods of supporting the access and benefit-sharing system. This way, the complications around tracking how the materials are used would no longer be an issue.
Gene editing is a little further into the future for Africa. There is still some way to go in terms of the technology and regulatory framework for that in Africa. What we are focused on at the moment is using genotyping and sequencing technologies as a way to better understand the materials we have and to produce sub-sets of our materials, which would be useful to pre-breeding.
One of the things we focus on a lot in genebanks is making our materials useful by ascertaining their genetic information for several reasons. First, without understanding the materials, we would be unable to produce the varieties that we need to, for example, to address climate change. Second, we would be unable to develop the underutilised species, including Bambara groundnuts and Africa yam bean without these technologies. Third, we would be unable to convince our funders to continue providing funds unless we show that our materials are useful because there is always a battle to make a case for genebanks. Some stakeholders assert that genebanks are museums or repositories of useless materials that would not be used in breeding programmes. Therefore, the use of genotyping and phenotyping technologies allows us to make our materials more useful. They also help us to manage our genebanks more effectively. For example, with cassava, we now use genomics technologies to see where we have duplications in our collection.
FI: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the IITA genebank?
MA: We have reduced staffing. IITA has been on partial lockdown. But we have made sure that we can keep all the accessions that we have growing in the field. For example, we are still planting yam this week. Also, we are still doing subculturing of the clonal crops which is necessary to maintain in vitro collections. We are maintaining our collections, but we have cut back on certain activities to reduce the number of staff on our campus. We are also receiving fewer requests. At the moment, we are mainly concerned with ensuring that our collection is safely conserved.
Furthermore, we are involved in a programme that sends seeds to countries around sub-Saharan Africa to support the recovery of agriculture after the pandemic. We plan to send some seed, such as African yam bean along with bananas/plantain as tissue culture, directly from the gene bank to Sierra Leone. There, we work with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Sierra Leone Agriculture Research Institute.
We are also working a lot within South-West Nigeria, particularly by supplying seeds, support seed production, nutrition, amongst others.
FI: Please share any final thoughts on genebanks, agriculture and the future of food.
MA: I have three final thoughts.
First, genebanks play a critical role in the conservation and utilisation of crops which have a lot of potential but have not been fully utilised, particularly with respect to climate change and nutrition.
Climate change and nutrition are two of the main points we need to focus on. How can we adapt to climate change? How can we improve the nutritional value of diets in sub-Saharan Africa? Some of the crops in genebanks have not been utilised as much as they should have been.
Second, crop wild relatives have been under collected so far.
There is a lot of diversity in these crop wild relatives, which are very important for the future of agriculture.
Third, genebanks are ex-situ conservations, that is, the conservation of materials that have been taken from their natural habitats and conserved usually in a gene bank. However, this is only part of the story. We also have to consider in-situ conservation because it is not possible to conserve the full diversity of genetic materials of some crops in the genebanks. Therefore, conserving the materials in farmers’ fields or the wild is still allowing those plants to adapt to climate change. We have unfortunately lost that connection as a lot of the support and funding to promote in-situ conservation has stopped.
For the future, we need to reintroduce and support in-situ conservation.
Selected Terminology
Accession: any independent item in genebanks. For example, seed collected at a particular place.
Digital Sequencing/Genomics: studying variation at the level of DNA sequences and understanding the genetic control of important traits.
Ex-situ conservation: conservation removed from natural habitat. For example, genebanks.
In-situ conservation: conservation where the plant or animal is naturally situated. For example, field or farmers field.
Genotyping: studying variation at the DNA level.
Germplasm, Genetic Resources and Genetic Materials: used broadly to essentially describe any representation of the variability found in a species.
Landraces: the types of crops that have not been formally bred but have been developed by farmers over many centuries.
Phenotyping: studying variation at the level of the whole organism or part of it. For example, yield and disease resistance.
Wild relatives: crop wild relatives (CWR) are species that are related to the crops we eat. They are not used in agriculture, but they can cross (hybridise) with the crop and can be used in breeding improvements.
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