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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The Ultimate Crop Insurance
  • Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 15:21:14 -0600

Week of Sept. 11, 2004; Vol. 166, No. 11 , p. 170
The Ultimate Crop Insurance
A new treaty strives to save 10,000 years of plant breeding
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040911/bob10.asp
>From Science News, Vol. 166, No. 11, Sept. 11, 2004, p. 170.

In late summer 2002, looters threatened war-engulfed Afghanistan's
agricultural heritage. Unknown pillagers dumped stocks of carefully labeled
seeds as they ransacked buildings in Ghazni and Jalalabad, where the material
had been hidden for safekeeping. All the looters wanted, apparently, were the
plastic and glass jars in which the seeds were stored. The scattered seeds
weren't the starter for next year's crops but the genetic backup for the
agrarian nation's agriculture. The catalogued seeds of various strains of
wheat, barley, chickpeas, lentils, almonds, pomegranates, and melons would
have been deployed to create new seed supplies if drought, insects, or some
other disaster had wiped out the region's production of crop seeds. They also
represented the raw material for creating future lines of crops.

Botanists had recorded where each seed type had come from and information
about the climate and geography of its place of origin. However, seeds for
cold-tolerant wheat didn't look any different from those for a cold-sensitive
but disease-tolerant plant. Removed from their labeled jars, these and all
the other seeds lost their archival value.

"It's like having a library of books with no titles on them," notes Geoffrey
Hawtin, the former director general of the International Plant Genetic
Resources Institute in Rome.

Seed repositories, such as those in Afghanistan, sometimes called gene banks,
are often casualties of war, says Ruth Raymond of that institute. "Cambodia,
Rwanda, Somalia, Iraq—we know of at least 50 or 60 examples of where it's
happened," she says. Bank holdings often offer looters the makings for dinner
or free seed for a small crop. In most cases, these events haven't turned
into long-term disasters because gene banks in other countries house backup
stores. That's true for Afghanistan and the other war-struck countries. When
hostilities subside, a country can begin rebuilding its gene bank with seeds
from half a world away.

Offering such relief to an embattled country is just one of the missions of
gene banks, which together form an informal international system. The banks
also preserve the genes that have helped plant species thrive in harsh
climates, survive diseases, or provide particular flavors or other appealing
traits.

Crop diversity constitutes agriculture's "global wealth—the set of genes that
have been developed by farmers over 10,000 years," explains Clive Stannard of
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.

Unfortunately, the successes of large agribusiness companies are adding to
the need for a strong seed-repository system and worldwide crop diversity.

A small number of popular, high-yielding crop varieties bred by these
companies have increasingly edged out landraces, the varieties adapted to
localized conditions during millennia of farming. If not archived in a
secure, internationally sanctioned gene-banking system, these ancient
varieties could disappear, taking with them as-yet-undiscovered genes for
important traits.

A decade ago, a United Nations treaty on species conservation had the
unintended effect of erecting roadblocks to gene banking and breeding. But on
June 29, a new International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and
Agriculture went into effect. Supporters hope it will break down those
obstacles and bolster the gene-banking system, and help preserve the genetic
heritage of crops.

To the rescue

In December 1993, the Convention on Biological Diversity entered into force,
signed and ratified by most nations. The convention dramatically changed how
governments, corporations, farmers, and even tribal chiefs in countries such
as Brazil viewed the agricultural and wild plants growing around them.

Gone were the days when bioprospectors from industrial nations could drop
into a jungle, pluck any intriguing plant and ship it home for analysis, and
then extract a substance for use as a high-value, patentable drug. With the
new treaty, companies would have to work with locals and share profits (SN:
5/29/04, p. 344: Available to subscribers at
http://sciencenews.org/articles/20040529/bob8.asp).

The treaty established the principle that a nation holds sovereign rights to
the genetic resources of any plant within its borders (SN: 6/20/92, p. 407).
But agricultural policymakers quickly recognized that this seemingly
straightforward attempt to protect countries from exploitation was at odds
with both the nature of agriculture and the conservation of cultivated
resources.

It's not easy to determine who deserves sovereignty over plant genes.
Throughout history, people have been trading edible plants, so most farmed
crops have murky national origins.

In the wake of the 1993 biodiversity treaty, many nations expressed a new
reluctance to continue sharing banked seeds freely, lest they forfeit their
legal rights to a plant's genetic resources.

Suketoshi Taba encountered this change in attitude when he tried to head off
an apparent crisis affecting seed corn in gene banks throughout Latin
America. Taba heads maize genetic resources at the International Maize and
Wheat Improvement Center, which is known worldwide by its acronym in Spanish,
CIMMYT. It's located near Mexico City.

Budgets for maintaining gene banks had been compromised by a regional
economic downturn in the early 1990s. Many seeds were not being sufficiently
dried before storage, and refrigeration units in the storage facilities often
lost power or broke down. The proportion of banked maize seeds able to
germinate at any given time should exceed 85 percent, he says, but had fallen
well below 50 percent.

To rescue seeds from banks in Cuba and 12 other Latin American nations, Taba
offered to have the imperiled seed stores replanted locally and the
next-generation seeds shared between the various nations' banks and CIMMYT.
The countries initially balked, arguing that these seed stocks, though
imperiled, were their property. In the end, botanists prevailed over
politicians, and Taba saved 10,000 sets of seeds at a cost of only slightly
more than $1 million.

The 1993 treaty, which essentially nationalized genetic resources, created
other potential obstacles to improving crop seeds. It encouraged countries to
require a seed company or laboratory to work out an international contract
every time it imported seed. The cost of legal review, DNA analysis of each
batch and supervision by treaty-enforcement officials would be staggering.
"You would just close down plant breeding as a science," Raymond says.

On the menu

By the mid-1990s, a groundswell developed among nations for a remedy to the
Convention on Biological Diversity. In late 2001, after 7 years of debate,
negotiators from about 120 countries finally settled on the outline of the
new crop biodiversity treaty.

The new treaty promotes the collection and banking of seeds, the sharing of
seeds among countries that pledge to honor the treaty, and an international
survey of genetic resources currently existing in gene banks and farmers'
fields around the globe (SN: 7/17/04, p. 45: Available to subscribers at
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040717/note10.asp). The treaty also
promises to improve crops for farmers, especially those living in harsh
environments.

DIVERSE VIEWS. Seed fairs, such as this one in Kenya, award prizes to farmers
bringing in the most crop varieties—some show up with as many as 50 different
types. Such competitions encourage genetic diversity and crops that continue
to evolve with local conditions.
Mulvany/ITDG

During their wrangling, negotiators imposed limits on what plants would be
covered by the new treaty. Just 35 food crops and 29 plants for livestock
forage made the list. Although reasons for a type of plant not making the new
treaty's list vary, politics often proved a major factor, says Patrick
Mulvany of ITDG, an international sustainable-development foundation in
Rugby, England.

If a company breeds a new plant variety from foreign seeds of one of the 64
plants included, the treaty permits that company to commercialize the crop.
However, a share of any profit must be contributed to a treaty fund for
programs in developing countries to promote sustainable farming or
conservation of genetic diversity in crops.

When the treaty qualified to go into force earlier this year, 40 nations had
ratified it. Since then, 15 more nations have joined the group, and more are
poised to do so.

The United States remains a major holdout among industrial nations. It was
among the negotiators of the latest treaty, but the Senate hasn't taken up
the treaty. A leading reservation, U.S. officials say, is concern over
preserving commercial rights to a share of the profit for seeds passed
between countries. Still to be worked out are the size of those royalties,
whether they should be paid when seed is first imported or when a crop is
marketed, how long a seed developer must pay royalties, and whether royalties
should vary by crop.

Still, says Peter Bretting of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service in
Beltsville, Md., "the U.S. government is certainly conceptually supportive of
the treaty."

The Convention on Biodiversity continues to govern the commercial
exploitation of plants not listed under the new treaty. These include some
important food crops, such as soybeans, peanuts, onions, and grapes. In these
cases, countries negotiate individual commercial agreements without any
contribution to an international program.

Bankers' blues

The new treaty's biggest current initiative is creating the Global Crop
Diversity Trust, which will be an autonomous agency that coordinates the
1,500-or-so gene banks scattered throughout more than 100 nations. Among the
largest are the 11 international facilities affiliated with the Consultative
Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Together, they store
some 600,000 genetically distinct seed samples.

All CGIAR members will "sign agreements with the treaty, by which they will
put their entire collections under its policy guidance," Stannard says, The
United States has its own system of more than 20 gene banks. They hold some
450,000 samples of roughly 10,000 plant species. Seeds maintained in these
facilities at temperatures above freezing might require replanting every 5 to
10 years to stay viable.

The nation's biggest gene bank, located in Fort Collins, Colo., holds
duplicates of seeds kept in all the other U.S. facilities and stores most of
them at –18°C to –55°C. At these temperatures, metabolic processes slow and
the aging of seeds is delayed, so seeds stay viable for 50 to 100 years,
explains Bretting.

Unfortunately, Raymond notes, most of the world's seed repositories aren't as
well maintained or financed as the U.S. facilities are. Seed maintenance is
"not sexy," she laments, so most governments neglect it. "How excited can you
get about funding refrigeration?" she asks.

Yet, says Raymond, gene banks are an "essential insurance program to
guarantee that genes will remain safe and accessible for future crop
improvement." This is becoming increasingly important, she notes, as
biological diversity wanes throughout the world.

Diminishing diversity

In the 1950s, Chinese farmers grew about 10,000 varieties of wheat. Two
decades later, Raymond notes, the number had fallen to 1,000. India
experienced a similar loss of rice diversity over the past 3 decades, she
says. And throughout the Andes, the cradle of tomatoes, wild-tomato species
have become so imperiled that "before too long, the only real examples of
tomato diversity will be in a gene bank," she says.

Raymond cites U.N. estimates that one in 12 flowering plants—including crop
types such as wild potatoes—will go extinct within 2 decades.

Commercial plant breeding has also been winnowing plant diversity, observes
Marilyn Warburton, a molecular geneticist at CIMMYT.

Commercial growers prefer uniformity in crops for the sake of mechanized
harvesting, so breeders have focused on developing high-yielding crops that
will grow the same size across a field; respond consistently to weather,
climate, and nourishment; resist blights; and mature within a tight window of
time during harvest season.

Warburton has confirmed great genetic variability in landraces of wheat
planted in developing countries before the agricultural movement that came to
be known as the green revolution. Her DNA analyses show that in their efforts
to achieve the high yields, CIMMYT and other green revolution breeders
"reduced diversity in traits sampled throughout the genome."

Warburton notes that wheat yields have lately leveled off in many developed
countries, despite intense breeding efforts to raise them. This has fostered
speculation, she says, that commercial breeders might have "run out of
genetic variation."

WHEAT'S WORTH. These newly synthesized lines of bread wheat have restored the
traditional crop's lost genetic diversity.
CIMMYT

Her CIMMYT colleagues, however, have developed what they call synthetic bread
wheats, which demonstrate that genetic crop diversity can be restored or even
amplified. Over a 15-year period, Abdul Mujeeb-Kazi and his team crossed
banked seeds that represented the original wild parents of durum wheat and
then crossed their progeny with another wild wheat. This effectively
duplicated the natural events that originally gave rise to bread wheat some
10,000 years ago.

CIMMYT scientists have since repeated the process to produce additional
synthetic bread-wheat lines.

Warburton's analyses of these lines' DNA now show that genetically, "they are
about as diverse as the original landraces of wheat." However, she notes, the
new wheats give up to 50 percent higher yields than the original green
revolution lines and yields similar to the best commercial yields today. An
added benefit: The new wheats are extremely resistant to environmental
stresses, such as pests, drought, and salty soils.

Plant triage

Healthy, well-stocked gene banks make such a success possible. Unfortunately,
Raymond observes, those in the United States and the CGIAR system aren't
typical. Most banks are ill funded and have outmoded equipment. A few amount
to little more than a stash of seeds in a bureaucrat's refrigerator.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust is inventorying gene banks to identify those
in need of rescue. Nations, foundations, and individuals are being asked to
donate funds to upgrade facilities that are in dire straits, especially banks
with important collections. Once these gene banks gain solid footing, they
may qualify for annual funds from a new endowment being set up under the
trust.

Raymond has been charged with spearheading a campaign to raise an additional
$260 million to establish that endowment, which should eventually permit
annual disbursements to gene banks totaling some $12 million for boring
budget items such as payments for electricity and new refrigerators.

"What we're requesting is chicken feed," she says. However, she adds, even
this small endowment could yield big dividends in developing countries. "And
it's for such a great cause," she argues ardently. "I mean, we're talking
about the [agricultural] security of the world."




  • [Livingontheland] The Ultimate Crop Insurance, Tradingpost, 09/17/2004

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