Biodiversity research and informatics in Bioversity International
TDWG 2009 meeting‘e-knowledge about Biodiversity and Agriculture’
Montpellier, 9-13 November 2009
Elizabeth Arnaud
Agricultural Biodiversity
Not just a result of natural selection, it is the result of thousands of years of human activity.
careful selection of useful traits by farmers, plant breeders and researchers.
Genetic resources are the genetic material that contains characteristics of actual or potential value.
A resource is used
Plant genetic resourcesAnimals, including aquatic resources,
MicroorganismsOther aspects of agricultural biodiversity.
Conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity to improve the livelihoods of poor people
Nikolai Vavilov – 1887 -1943
• Soviet botanist and geneticist
• value of genetic diversity in domesticated crop plants and their wild relatives
• 8 centres of origin of cultivated plants
• Botanical-agronomic expeditions to collect seeds worldwide
• The world's largest collection of plant seeds in Leningrad -200,000 plant seeds
N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry
Look at the ‘Vaviblog’
Collecting samples for ex situ conservation
• Bioversity supported explorations • 560 collecting missions from 1976 to 1996• 221,077 samples• 4,300 species distributed in 137 countries
• Safely conserved in the international and national genebanks, available upon request
• Scanning mission reports
• Herbarium Specimen in genebanks - digitization
11 genebanks among the 15 international agricultural research centres of CGIAR
450,000 samplesdistributed in one year
On farm and in situ conservation projects
Biodiversity is best conserved in the context of the social networks, local institutions and indigenous knowledge
Maize farmers in Timor Leste. Photo: CIMMYT.
In Situ Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives Through Enhanced Information Management and Field Application – Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan
SINGER
International collections
Sample ordering gateway
EURISCO
European plant collections
Crop Wild Relatives Portal
On line catalogues for crop collections and wild relatives
Global Public Goods
Generation Challenge Programme
1. Exploration of the diversity conserved in CGIAR genebanks
2. Gene discovery 3. Trait capture for improvement
Linking Passport data, taxonomy to molecular data and phenotype
Phylogenomic tool for plant comparative genomics (I-GOST)
Crop trait ontology Molecular Breeding Platform
Standards and Bests practices for genebanks
Multi Crop Passport data (FAO/Bioversity)
Morpho-taxonomic Descriptors
Descriptors for Farmers knowledge
Knowledge base on best practices
for genebank management
Mapping the Crop and wild relatives Diversity
• DIVA – GIS package• For national plant genetic resources programmes
& regional networks • understanding species' environmental adaptations• predicting species distribution. • map and query climate data. • Free and simple
Genebanks and Botanical gardens are partners in conservation
Millenium seed genebank• By the end of 2009, successfully saved seeds from 10% of the world's wild plant species.• By 2020, secure the safe storage of seed from 25% of the world’s plants.
Reached with Musa itinerans seedsDarwinCore for genebanks
Botanic gardens are an important source of crop wild relative germplasm
Why a TDWG meeting with a focus on Agriculture ?
• Same information/Informatics needs• Linking biological data sets from all Biodiversity
conservation partners • Linking research for food and agriculture with the
academic research • Join and/or create groups of interest ?