The importance of living seed / gene banks

[ottawagardener]

I was 'flipping' through Nature News online when I found this article about a berry repository in Russia under threat:

www.nature.com/news/2010/100811/full/news.2010.400.html

and it reminded me that not only is it important that we keep seed/graft material alive but that we also incorporate old material into plants to maintain genetic potential / diversity.

Anyhow, just glad that there are so many committed people, such as on Homegrown Goodness.

[garnetmoth]

Thanks for sharing. thats so sad. I hope they can get a stay to relocate the plants- It seems a bit extreme to say no where else in Russia is suitable, just probably not one site large enough in the exact same climate?

[galina]

www.change.org/croptrust/petitions/view/tell_the_president_of_russia_to_stop_the_destruction_of_the_future_of_food

This is a petition to stop the destruction of this seed bank.

[wildseed57]

I wonder if we could get seeds or plant material from them, if they do close it down it would be a shame to lose such a resource for so many rare species. I think I will look and see how i might contact just in case they do decide to close it.
George W.

[mjc]

Plant material is such a pain in the posterior to import into the US...seeds aren't much easier, but at least are doable.

Yes, it would be great if we could, but for quite a while they were not an easy source to get material from. They may have 'relaxed' a little under threat of imminent doom. It would be worth a shot, especially for some of the European members.

[ottawagardener]

I was thinking that European members might want to try and salvage some of these varieties.

[Penny]

Sad article, thanks for posting this Telsing.

[garnetmoth]

I went ahead and signed the change.org petition- I stated that I understand non-profit centers needing to be cut from the books, but consider selling it as a plant collection, or at least sell to the developer in parcels, encourage them to keep plantings in their design instead of demolishing all of them, and while parcels are being developed, allow the station workers to propagate what is left.... Will anything good come of this? Ill continue to hope.

[wildseed57]

That was pretty much my thought, that some of the Euro-members might be able to get some plant material from them should they get closed down, I sure that with the right paper work some one could possibly gets seeds, but getting cuttings in would be a miracle as they would be stopped before they could get in. Its always sad when things like that happens, it seems that more and more its the big corporations that win out especially when there is huge amounts of money to be made.
George W.

[mjc]

The seed is not the problem.

A little on the structure of the Russian genebank.

Pavlovsk is just one station out of 12. The seed accessions kept there are easily absorbed into the 11 other facilities. It's the plants themselves that are the problem.

The Station was organised in 1926 near St. Petersburg. Being one of the major stations of VIR, it studies perennial grasses and cruciferous tubers cultivated in the Non-Black-Soil area. There are over 3000 accessions of fruit and berry plants maintained in vivo in its gardens. More than 40 of these fruit samples have been commercialized. This station operates an experiment farm, a quarantine nursery and greenhouses.

A number of those accessions are unique to that collection (some may still be found in the wild, but many probably are no longer available from the original sources).

And that is the real problem. The V. I. R. is notoriously stingy with access to their accessions, so whether or not they will even honor non-institutional (as in other research stations) requests is the big question.

Maybe one good thing can come from this...maybe they will loosen up and allow freer access?