Program Preserves Endangered Crop Varieties

Posted by Matt Hopkins|17 February 2009

Scientists involved in a seed-rescue program are saving more than 50,000 varieties of endangered crop species for breeding. The program aims to help farmers in the developing world cope with food shortages, pests, disease, and changing climate conditions, reports Bloomberg.com. The Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is in charge of the program, says that rare seed varieties may hold qualities that enable crops to adjust to changing weather conditions.

“Growing conditions and food demands change rapidly and breeders never know which variety stored in a crop gene bank somewhere in the world is going to be that proverbial ‘needle in the haystack’ that will provide the critical trait that can literally make the difference between abundance and starvation,” said Trust Executive Director Cary Fowler. The Trust added that another benefit of the rescue efforts is being able to document seed characteristics, which may help plant breeders in the future.

According to the Trust, agreements with organizations in 46 countries will rescue 53,000 rare varieties of wheat, barley, chickpea, rice, banana, yam, and potatoes, which are at risk because of war, economic collapse, and lack of refrigeration.

Three samples of each seed will be prepared; one batch will go to a gene bank meeting international standards, and another will go to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, which was opened last year to protect crops from extinction. The vault, which can hold 4.5 million samples, or 2 billion seeds, started with 268,000 samples comprising 100 million seeds.