Q+A: Seed Banks – Critical for Climate Adaptation

By DAVID HENRY

The effects of climate change are putting today’s crops at risk. It is vital to conserve seeds of different crop varieties so that plant breeders can use them to develop crops with greater tolerance to flooding and high temperatures while resisting drought, pests, and diseases.

As countries strive to fulfil pledges to restore vast areas of degraded forest landscapes, there are also numerous challenges associated with collecting, storing, and distributing tree seeds from wild species with sufficient genetic diversity.

Last week, the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) conference GLF Nairobi 2023: A New Vision for Earth called for urgent action to better prepare our planet’s people and landscapes for the effects of climate change. On the first day of the event, crop and tree genetic resource conservation experts spoke about the importance of seedbanks in conserving genetic diversity and ensuring the availability of seeds at a joint CIFOR-ICRAF and Crop Trust side event.

Éliane Ubalijoro, CIFOR-ICRAF’s chief executive officer, opened the event with a call for transformation to stabilize our climate and provide a growing global population with enough nutritious food. “The importance of seed banks in achieving this goal cannot be underestimated,” she said. “They conserve the world’s seed diversity including our food crops and trees, and they share the diversity with scientists and farmers to make our food systems on our planet as resilient as possible.”

Crop Trust executive director Stefan Schmitz closed the session with the insight that “diversity in principle is what matters. We need it in order to transform our agri-food systems – especially with neglected and underutilized species. So much needs to be done, and so much diversity still needs to be conserved before it is lost forever.”

Forests News asked the speakers for some insights into their research, passion for diversity, and views about genebanks in Africa.

Forests News: Why is it important to conserve and utilize crop and tree diversity?

Sunday Aladele, research director and former executive director of Nigeria’s genebank, the National Centre for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology (NACGRAB): Crop diversity offers options. It gives us the raw materials that possess the necessary genes that breeders will use to develop new crop varieties with important climate-resilient traits. It also provides better livelihoods to farmers, consumers and industries in the face of unexpected climatic challenges.

Ramni Jamnadass, principal scientist and research leader at CIFOR-ICRAF: As for agrifood systems, healthy, resilient forests and agroforests require substantial diversity at the species and genetic level. Tree species diversity allows for varied food sources, habitat structure, ecological functions, and stability against environmental stresses.

Chrispus Oduori, chief research scientist of Kenya Agricultural & Livestock

Research Organisation (KALRO), Kibos Centre: Crop diversity makes the process of ‘pre-breeding’ possible. This is basically the development of new genetic materials by crossing wild or unadapted plant relatives of crop species with cultivated crops to introduce desirable novel traits into breeding programs.

Asmund Asdal, coordinator of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault at the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen): Genebanks conserve and make these crucial resources available for breeding and research. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault provides an extra level of security for the resources by saving duplicates of the seeds and the genetic resources under optimal conditions in a safe place.

Forests News: What are the challenges of managing seedbanks in Africa?

Aladele: The challenges for most of our seedbanks are financial: poor budgetary allocation from governments, poor infrastructure, and inconsistent policies. To navigate this, we need to work in a smart yet cautious way. We have to make sure that collections are kept to very low or manageable sizes, and that regeneration is carried out slowly at reasonable intervals, based on requests, distribution, and viability assessments.