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 ?

• … is on loan to us from our Children

Biodiversity, the planet’s most valuable resources,…

credit: M. Hermann/Bioversity International

credit: E.Arnaud/Bioversity International

Bioversity II, 1997