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Bioversity International awards two research fellowships

For immediate release
Rome, Italy

Bioversity International’s Board of Trustees recently approved two Vavilov-Frankel Fellowships for research into agricultural biodiversity. Enoch G. Achigan-Dako, of Benin, will study watermelon and its wild relatives with a view to improving conservation and use of genetic diversity. Dorin Gupta, from India, plans to mine the genome of Medicago truncatula (barrel medic) in search of markers that can be used in lentil breeding. The Fellowships are intended to advance the careers of younger scientists from developing countries by enabling them to carry out relevant, innovative research outside their own countries. Research must also be valuable and applicable to the home country.

Medicago trunculata was selected as a model legume for genome sequencing and the results are now being used to further research in many areas. Gupta will work with Dr Paul Taylor at BioMarka at the University of Melbourne in Australia, looking for markers in medic that could help to identify useful genes in lentil, especially wild relatives. Cultivated lentil diversity is not all that broad, and Gupta’s previous research has been somewhat hampered by the lack of useful variability from which to breed improved varieties. Although she has had some success with using wild lentils to improve cultivated varieties, Gupta believes that molecular markers will improve the efficiency of lentil breeding by enabling her and all breeders to target genes of interest. Gupta will be co-supervised by Sarkar Ashutosh, a lentil breeder at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), which will also be supplying some of the materials for the study in Australia.

For most people watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) is first and foremost a juicy, refreshing fruit associated with hot summer days. In west Africa, however, there are species of C. lanatus and its close wild relative C. colocynthis that have bitter, inedible flesh. Both species are widely used as sources of proteins, vitamins and oil, and also provide an income for small farmers. Some researchers have taken that as evidence that watermelon was domesticated in Africa. However, the situation is unclear, with the relationship between C. lanatus and C. colocynthis confused, and several other species or subspecies adding to the confusion. Achigan-Dako plans to use molecular tools to characterize various species of melon collected in Africa and elsewhere and to use the data to build a better tree of family relationships among the various groups. This will help both to conserve genetic diversity and to make use of that diversity, for example by breeding new watermelon varieties with seeds appropriate for infant food, an increasingly important use in sub-Saharan Africa. Achigan-Dako will be hosted by the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Research at Gatersleben in Germany.

Dr Olga Linares, leader of the Bioversity Board’s Fellowships Task Group, commented that all the short-listed applications had been strong, and both of the chosen applications were very good.

"I am very happy with the quality of our Vavilov-Frankel Fellows again this year," said Elizabeth Goldberg, head of training at Bioversity. "In future we hope to be able to strengthen the programme even further."

Note to editors:
The Vavilov-Frankel Fellowships were established in 1989 to commemorate the achievements of Academician Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov and Sir Otto Frankel. The Fellowships are supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation in Australia and Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc in the USA. For further information, visit the Fellowship web site.
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Forestry fellowship: call for applications

Bioversity International invites young African scientists to apply for the Abdou-Salam Ouédraogo Fellowship, which offers support for research on conservation and use of forest genetic resources. For full details of the fellowship and how to apply, see Bioversity's Training web site. Closing date for applications is 30 May 2008.
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Angola to Brazil and back again

South-south collaboration strengthens the use of agricultural biodiversity

Almost three years ago, José Pedro won an MSc scholarship linking Africa and Brazil in training for plant genetic resources. Having completed his dissertation, Pedro is now back in Angola, putting his training to good work and full of confidence for the future.

José Pedro was, by his own admission, an “experiment” in an effort to strengthen links between academic institutions and national agricultural research systems of countries in the global “South”. The government of Brazil funded a scholarship, managed by Bioversity, which allowed Pedro to travel from Agostinho Neto University in Angola to do his research at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in Brazil. Pedro had already completed a study of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) at the Angolan Plant Genetic Resources Center (CNRF), and planned to extend his research to cowpea (Vigna unguiculata).

“I chose cowpea to try to expand my knowledge to other legumes,” Pedro said. “Cowpea and common beans are important because both are basic foods for the Angolan population.” Cowpea is grown throughout Angola, and the genebank holds about 300 accessions that need to be characterized.

Pedro worked with Professor Antonio Carlos Alves at UFSC to design his research, which he then carried out back in Angola. He collected germplasm throughout the country, asked farmers about how they use cowpea and manage their cropping systems, and did a detailed characterization of varieties from the CNRF genebank. He then went back to UFSC to analyze the data and to write his thesis.

Liz Matos, Lecturer and Reader in Genetics, Evolution, and Conservation and Management of Biological Resources at the Agostinho Neto University, and Pedro’s supervisor, said that his research and training were “extremely useful for the CNRF. He returned with excellent training”.

That training was put to work almost immediately on Pedro’s return to Angola. “He is National Advisor of a technical cooperation programme organized by FAO,” Matos said. That involves training 8 Angolan technicians to use the characterization skills that he has developed. Matos thinks that Pedro has excellent prospects with CNRF, responsible for characterization and storage of accessions collected throughout the country.

Overall, both Pedro and Matos think that the “experiment” was a great success. Matos singles out the ease with which Portuguese-speaking scientists from Africa can make use of materials and teaching available in Brazil. “It confirmed the advantage of sending staff for training in Brazilian institutions,” she said. “There is no problem of language and study material is available in Portuguese.”

Pedro goes further. “Southern cooperation to develop agricultural biodiversity can provide added value in the fight against hunger, poverty and social inequality in many countries of this region.” He is also convinced that his research could provide a model for similar studies on other crops and in other countries in the region.

Further scholarships are under discussion, and José Pedro is convinced of their value. “I think the partnership between Bioversity and UFSC, to strengthen research in the area of plant genetic resources and oriented to Portuguese-speaking countries, should be encouraged to continue.”

Pedro also knows that these plans will be watched with keen interest. “I have a colleague, head of the seed laboratory, who is very interested in following her studies on germplasm conservation.”

For further information contact Margarita Baena.

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Farmers grow more diversity than expected, in unexpected ways

For immediate release
Rome, Italy
A 10-year study in eight countries has revealed that farmers maintain more diversity than previously thought, and do so in two distinct ways for two distinct reasons.

"Perhaps the most important result overall is that farmers who choose to grow traditional varieties are generally growing more than one variety, which is presumably a deliberate choice in favour of diversity" said Devra Jarvis, senior scientist at Bioversity, who coordinated the study.

The paper by Jarvis and her colleagues is published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (see details below). On more than 2000 small farms across five continents the team measured the richness and the evenness of the varieties farmers grow in their fields and gardens. Richness and evenness are two measurements of diversity that have long been used by ecologists. Richness refers to the number of different varieties, regardless of how common each may be. Evenness, by contrast, measures how common each variety is. If all the varieties are planted on roughly equal areas of land, then evenness is high, whereas if one or two varieties dominate the area planted to that crop, evenness is low.

"The point of these measures," said Jarvis "is that they let us compare different crops in different places and different cultures. They’re not often used in small-scale or single species studies."

The partnership studied 27 crops in 26 communities, representing about 63,600 hectares distributed across eight countries. Sites ranged from sea level, in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, to above 3000 metres in Nepal. Environments included arid and semi-arid areas of Burkina Faso and Morocco, temperate areas in Hungary and Nepal, tropical highlands in Ethiopia, and tropical and subtropical lowlands in Mexico, Amazonian Peru and Vietnam. Farming systems were rain-fed or irrigated, stable or shifting cultivation.

"We wanted to be sure that we were covering different cultures and also different crop breeding systems," Jarvis explained. "We also had to concentrate on the major subsistence crops in each country, and on crops of global importance. And we wanted to develop tools that could be used anywhere to assess the diversity farmers are maintaining and using."

The results show that, despite the differences among crops, cultures and countries, there are consistent patterns to the ways farmers use and maintain diversity.

On any given farm, staple crops tend to have low evenness, so that one variety is dominant, while non staples are more even, with each variety occupying roughly the same area. Jarvis believes this reflects two different strategies. For staples, farmers are ensuring that they have diversity available for future use, for example to cope with environmental change or social and economic needs. For non-staples, they are growing different varieties that they currently need for different purposes. "The difference between the two situations has implications for the use and conservation of traditional variety diversity," Jarvis said.

Others have welcomed the results of the study. Jean-Louis Pham, at the French Institute of Research for Development in Montpellier, France, paid tribute to the painstaking efforts needed to assemble so much relatively simple data. He told a reporter that the results will no doubt be widely used as a reference, "providing us with a kind of state of the world of crop diversity at the beginning of the 21st century".

Reference: A global perspective of the richness and evenness of traditional crop-variety diversity maintained by farming communities PNAS published March 24, 2008, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0800607105

For further information, contact Jeremy Cherfas.
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Banana and plantain researchers get a new web site

The ProMusa network—established in 1997 by Bioversity to provide expert support to the world’s (very few) banana breeders—has a new website that features discussions, an electronic newsletter, an e-mail alert for registered users and commenting facilities to express opinions on individual articles.

The changes come on the heels of the re-launch of the ProMusa network under the auspices of the International Society for Horticultural Sciences (ISHS). The involvement with ISHS provides the opportunity to draw in expertise from other crops and to increase impact through the dissemination of results in the Society’s publications, such as Acta Horticulturae and Scripta Horticulturae. In the process, the number of working groups has been reduced from six to three (Crop Improvement, Crop Protection and Crop Production) to encourage inter-disciplinary thinking, to enable a more rapid response to changing research priorities and to facilitate the development of inter-group projects. The working groups take the lead in organizing annual research meetings, rotating between topics and moving around banana-producing regions.

The interactive tools on the website are designed to facilitate the exchange of ideas among scientists and other stakeholders with an interest in banana and plantain. Each working group has a discussion forum where scientists can jointly reflect on the many R&D challenges that the ProMusa community addresses and reach an initial consensus on actions to address specific problems.

There is also scope for opinions and broader debate. For instance, virologists are debating whether the guidelines for the safe movement of banana germplasm, which currently impede the dissemination of about one-third of the accessions in the international Musa collection, should be revised.

The ProMusa website is maintained by Bioversity, which also provides a full-time Coordinator and logistic support. Other organizations provide the elected chairs of the working groups.

The ProMusa website is accessible at www.promusa.org.

For further information, contact Anne Vezina.
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Svalbard not the only safe haven for crop diversity

Embargoed until 00.01 hrs CET 26 February 2008

As the sun finally clears the horizon, signalling an end to the long winter night, the eyes of the world will be on the Global Seed Vault, dug into the mountainside above the town of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. The first boxes of 12 tonnes - a hundred million seeds - will be carried down the long tunnel to the deep freezers within, there to be kept in safety just in case. The specimens will all be what scientists call orthodox seeds, those that can be dried and stored at low temperatures without harm. Ironically, species that cannot be dried and stored have no place in the frozen Svalbard vault. They need cold, but they also need regular human attention. Where will they be secure?

For some, in the sunny south of France.

The first few hundred samples of banana and plantain from the International Musa Germplasm Collection, managed by Bioversity International and supported by the Belgian government, have been safely delivered from the International Transit Centre (ITC) at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium to the French Research Institute for Development (IRD) in Montpellier, France.

The "black box" collection at IRD - in reality a large vat kept at an extremely chilly -196°C by liquid nitrogen - represents the same kind of safety backup that Svalbard offers for orthodox seeds. Should anything happen to the samples at Leuven, like the typhoon that damaged the Philippine rice genebank or the looters who wiped out the genebank at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, duplicates will be available at IRD.

"It's a mirror of the need for crop diversity itself," said Emile Frison, Director General of Bioversity International, which is working closely with the Global Crop Diversity Trust to secure important collections of agricultural biodiversity. "Just as humanity needs different varieties of different crops, so different crops need different kinds of long-term storage."

Like bananas and plantains, crops such as coconut, cassava, yam, potato, sweet potato and taro are vitally important foods that are best conserved in field genebanks and tissue culture. But those methods are expensive, so scientists are working to develop protocols for cryopreservation, long-term storage at very low temperatures. KULeuven is a leader in this area and has been designated a Global Centre of Excellence on Plant Cryobiology. The experts there have been working with the genebanks of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and others to develop cryopreservation protocols and safety duplicates of important collections.

"The safety duplicates are at KULeuven in Belgium," Frison said. "But because the primary banana collection is already there, we had to put the safety duplicate somewhere else."

"We chose IRD to house the black box collection because of the expertise of their scientists in cryopreservation," said Professor Rony Swennen, Honorary Research Fellow at Bioversity and Director of the ITC. IRD researchers made an important contribution to cryopreservation by working out how many samples of each variety should be conserved.

"There is no guarantee that a thawed piece of plant tissue will regenerate into a fully viable plant," Swennen explained. "IRD scientists solved that problem by developing a method to calculate the number of samples needed to ensure a 95% chance that at least one of them will produce a plant."

The method is based on the survival rate of the accession, the risk level the genebank manager is willing to accept, and the time between regenerations. Armed with this information Bart Piette and Bart Panis, Belgian scientists at KULeuven, cryopreserved a batch of accessions three separate times, to minimise the risk that all might be contaminated. One of each repetition has gone to France while the other two remain in Belgium.

Just as the Trust is supporting the ongoing operations of the Global Seed Vault and the preparation and shipping of seeds to Svalbard, it is also supporting research into cryopreservation and safety backups for crops that need it. Tissue culture is expensive and time-consuming because fresh cultures must frequently be made, while field collections are vulnerable to environmental disasters. Research at the Global Centre of Excellence on Plant Cryobiology at KULeuven and elsewhere is delivering improved cryopreservation protocols that enable much longer storage without the need for human interference.

"The Trust's support in making sure that crops such as banana are safely stored for the global community is very much appreciated," said Frison. "But I think it is also important to recognize Belgium's contributions. The government has been a long-term supporter of research on the banana, from laboratory studies at KULeuven to field deployment of improved varieties and growing techniques. Without that, we might not have had any cryopreserved specimens to send to France."

For further information, contact Jeremy Cherfas at Bioversity International.

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New rice descriptors published

Bioversity International, with the International Rice Research Institute and the Africa Rice Centre, has just published a completely revised set of descriptors for wild and cultivated rice. Descriptor Lists are a vital tool for researchers interested in diversity to ensure that they have standardized metrics for describing varieties under study.

"The original list of descriptors for rice was published in 1980," said Adriana Alercia, who is responsible for descriptors at Bioversity. "It was in wide use and was considered the most valid system for rice." The new set of descriptors has been expanded to include wild relatives of the genus Oryza and to harmonize the descriptors as far as possible with those of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, which are geared to new commercial varieties. The list also highlights a set of minimum descriptors which can be used to discriminate among varieties with a high degree of certainty.

The new descriptor list has been drawn up in close consultation with experts at IRRI and the African Rice Centre and has been reviewed by 22 experts in the field.

Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton, who heads IRRI's rice genebank, welcomed the new descriptor list. "The descriptor list offers a universal language for describing rice diversity," he said. "If all rice researchers adopt this scheme it will produce a rapid, reliable and efficient means to store, retrieve and communicate information about rice diversity. And that is essential to make better use of the genebanks."

Also published recently by Bioversity International, descriptors for durian, a tropical fruit, and a translation into Portuguese of the descriptors for cowpea. A technical brief on how to develop crop descriptor lists is also available.

For further information, contact Adriana Alercia
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BBC World to screen documentary on crop biodiversity

BBC World will screen Forgotten Fruit, a documentary in the Earth Report series, on Friday 15 February 2008. The show, produced by Television Trust for the Environment, features Bioversity scientist Stefano Padulosi working with local partners on millet in India and Isabella dalla Ragione, a fruit collector and expert on ancient varieties in Italy.

The programme will first be broadcast on Friday at 20.30 with repeats on Mondays at 10.30 Tuesdays at 15.30 and Wednesdays at 02.30 and 08.30, all times GMT. (NB: Broadcasts may vary in different parts of the world. Please check details at www.bbcworld.com.)

N.B. The original clip has now been removed from this site. It can be found at the TVE web site.
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New partnership to build global genebank information system

The United States Department of Agriculture yesterday announced that the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Bioversity International and the Global Crop Diversity Trust have formed a partnership to develop a powerful but easy-to-use, Internet-based information management system for the world's plant genebanks.

Full details are available at the ARS web site.
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Oman signs Bioversity establishment agreement

The Sultanate of Oman recently announced that it had signed Bioversity International's establishment agreement. This brings the number of signatories to 52. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, H.E. Yousef Ben Alaoui Ben Abdallah, said that the Omani embassy in Rome will be depositing the signed document with Bioversity's hosts at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Countries continue to sign the agreement," said Emile Frison, Director General of Bioversity, "which proves that today our work is more useful and relevant to them than ever."

Oman also announced that it had set up two national committees on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. Both involve multiple stakeholders, including NGOs, and are intended to facilitate the implementation of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and other aspects of the use and conservation of agricultural biodiversity. One of the committees will be headed by the Under Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture and will implement general policies in this area. The other will be an executive committee, chaired by the Director of agricultural and animal research. It will develop research proposals, build information databases and review legislation and policies to ensure protection of biodiversity. This committee will also work to promote public awareness among Omani society of the importance of agricultural biodiversity.

"We look forward to even closer collaboration with our partners in Oman," said George Ayad, Director of Bioversity’s regional office for Central and Western Asia and North Africa.

For further information, contact Jeremy Cherfas.
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What African farmers want from fruit trees

Local people perceive indigenous fruit trees as sources of wood rather than food, one reason why they do not make better use of them. That is the conclusion of a study recently completed in coastal Kenya by Takashi Fukushima, an intern at Bioversity International supported by the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Science (JIRCAS). If so, introducing alternative timber and fuel trees might be an indirect way of promoting the food value of fruit trees.

Fukushima’s work was part of an ongoing Bioversity project on Use and Conservation of Indigenous Fruit Tree Diversity for Improved Livelihoods in Eastern Africa. The local people, in collaboration with the research partners, had identified five priority species: Adansonia digitata (baobab), Tamarindus indica (tamarind) Dialium orientale, Ziziphus mauritiana (Indian jujube) and Landolphia kirkii (East Africa rubber). Fukushima interviewed 200 farmers to see which aspects they valued of each species. Overall, wood value was preferred by most interviewees, followed by food value, availability and marketability. (Marketability and medicine were ranked equally.)

The high value given to wood means that people will cut indigenous fruit trees even though they could supply food and income. And the low perceived marketability diminishes further any incentive to protect and cultivate the species. Regional differences exacerbate the differences. In places with plentiful forests wood value, not surprisingly, is unimportant. People in areas where food is easier to come by downgrade the food value of fruit trees and those closer to markets value the marketability, even though seasonality and low prices generally mean that indigenous fruits do not contribute much to income.

In practice, the study complicates matters on the ground. It suggests that a major effort should be made to link farmers with the main market in Mombasa, where demand is greater and prices higher. In some areas fruit trees will be better treated if the people are encouraged also to plant fuel and timber species. These ideas will be considered in the next phase of the project.

Note: The JIRCAS Fellowship is described on the JIRCAS web site and further details can be obtained from Elizabeth Goldberg, Head of Capacity Development at Bioversity International.
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CGIAR genebanks distributing more material

Embargoed until 00.01 CEST 29 October 2007
Rome, Italy

The 11 genebanks supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research today reported that they had distributed almost 100,000 samples of plant material under the terms of the new Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA). The agreement is the legal instrument under which material and information is transferred under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. In essence, it ensures that material and information remain freely available and implements the multilateral system of access and benefit sharing of the Treaty.

The Governing Body of the International Treaty starts its second meeting today and the report is one of the documents it will consider. The report shows that CGIAR centres sent out 97,669 samples between 1 January and 1 August 2007. They received 3988 samples of new genetic material for safe-keeping in trust for the global community. The report was prepared by the CGIAR's System-wide Genetic Resources Programme, which is hosted by Bioversity International and which coordinates the CGIAR centres' activities in this area.

In the whole of 2004, the last year for which figures are available, the centres sent out 90,504 samples and received 5033 new accessions.
"The figures for the first seven months of 2007 are a clear increase, especially for distributions," said Emile Frison, Director General of Bioversity International.

Cary Fowler, Executive Secretary of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, agreed, but added that the amount of new material coming in to CGIAR and other genebanks was somewhat disappointing. "We've seen that climate change is happening now," Fowler said, "and we are going to need genebanks to cope with that. Crop diversity is essential for agriculture to adapt to changing conditions and we should therefore be bringing more material into safe-keeping."

There has been a shift in the type of material that is being distributed by CGIAR genebanks. "A high proportion consisted of plant genetic resources 'under Development'," explained Gerald Moore, Honorary Fellow at Bioversity International and an author of the report. That means that breeders are releasing improved lines for further work and assessment by others, which is vitally important for the further improvement of crop varieties. The use of the SMTA to do this ties the material and any products derived from the material to the access and benefit sharing system of the Treaty and means that these lines will always be available for others to make use of.

The report says that the centres encountered no overwhelming difficulties in implementing the SMTA for all material. Only three potential recipients – all in the US – refused to sign the SMTA, and some other requests for material were abandoned after the requestors were made aware of the SMTA.

The report identifies areas where the operation of the system could be eased. The length and complexity of the SMTA itself, which is often translated into the recipient's language, means that the documentation often exceeds the size and weight of the seeds being transferred. "Smaller and more compact versions of the SMTA would be helpful," the report notes. There is also a suggestion that when improved material is being exchanged among a large collaboration of breeders and others a single clause, which refers to the SMTA, in the general framework agreement would be simpler than inserting the SMTA in each and every dispatch.

There remains a crucial need to train potential users about the International Treaty. "The lack of awareness and understanding seems almost universal," commented one centre. "We receive frequent requests for specific information or for training courses." Some centres have already delivered training programmes and more are in the pipeline.

"The report shows that the Centres have embraced the Treaty and are putting it to work," said Emile Frison, Director General of Bioversity International. "With more awareness, and more training, which we stand ready to help provide, the Treaty will really come into its own as an international instrument to improve agriculture for those who need it most."

For further information, contact Jeremy Cherfas.
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A black box collection for bananas

Ninety six samples of banana diversity have arrived, frozen in liquid nitrogen, at the Institut de recherche pour le développement in Montpellier, France. This is the first shipment in what will eventually be a "safety duplicate" collection of the International Musa Germplasm Collection, housed at the International Transit Centre in Leuven, Belgium.

There's a full report in the banana research area of the Bioversity web site.
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Antoine Kremer discusses EVOLTREE's achievements and future

Antoine Kremer holds a joint position at INRA, the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, and the University of Bordeaux. He is also the co-ordinator of EVOLTREE, a large Network of Excellence funded by the European Union. In this brief interview he tells Jeremy Cherfas about EVOLTREE's achievements and the discussions about its future that took place at its Governing Board meeting at Bioversity headquarters in Rome.

to the interview. Permalink

EVOLTREE examines its progress

Rome, Italy
24 October 2007. For immediate release

EVOLTREE is a Network of Excellence launched 18 months ago under the Framework VI programme of the European Union. Networks of Excellence are new tools to support research, with three important aims: integration, research and dissemination. Bioversity International is a key partner in the EVOLTREE network.

The project is concerned with the role of trees as drivers of terrestrial biodiversity. A meeting of the EVOLTREE Governing Board in Rome today heard about project achievements, among them the establishment of a single shared repository for tree DNA and the selection of seven intensive study sites representative of different ecosystems.

The Governing Body also began discussions of how to ensure the long-term future and sustainability of the network once European support has ended.

For further details, contact b.vinceti@cgiar.org

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9 days until The International Day for Biodiversity: Biodiversity and Agriculture