Seeds aren't worth saving?

[tommo]

Seed banks under threat - Science Show - 2 October 2010 Audio file at link ^^^^ Transcript Robyn Williams:Here on The Science Show we are always worried about banks, with good reason. But as Ella Finkel reported in last Friday's journal Science, it's our own seed banks we should watch out for. Elizabeth Finkel: In case you didn't know, 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. But Australia doesn't have much to celebrate. In fact, 2010 might be remembered as the year yet another one of Australia's seed banks bit the dust. Most of us treasure biodiversity. We revel in the knowledge that there are thousands of varieties of apples or potatoes. Though of course, we've only ever seen a tiny number of them. While there are 30,000 edible species, just three provide 60% of the world's calories: wheat, rice and corn. Still we still need to hold on to the rest. When diseases overwhelm commercial crops, breeders turn to their wild cousins to borrow resistance genes. Take the rust epidemic now threatening the world's wheat supply. It's the genes of Asian wheatgrass that are girding the loins of commercial wheat. And in the future as we run out of prime farming land, it is the hardy bush tuckers that we might have to tuck into. These unfarmed species are at risk as cities, rangelands and fast-spreading golf courses take over their habitats. By way of insurance, they need to be preserved in seed banks. That's the idea behind Svalbard, the doomsday seed vault built into the permafrost on a Norwegian island a thousand kilometres from the North Pole. It is managed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, and Australia is an avid supporter, having pledged $21.3 million to the cause. But the doomsday vault is only part of the story. It is a back-up for the world's seed banks. And it is the seed banks that keep the global seed trade up and running. Without that trade, we'd all be sunk. For instance, in the 1980s, America's barley was hammered by a plague of barley yellow dwarf virus. Ethiopia's barley came to the rescue. To keep up a healthy world seed trade, seed banks have to actively regenerate and test their stocks. Many developing countries have trouble finding the funds to do that. And, it turns out, so too does Australia. Not so long ago, Australia boasted six functioning seed banks across the states. They were supported by state funds as well as the rural research and development corporations, mostly the Grains Research and Development Corporation. Two years ago, the Grains Corp restricted funding to its core business; the commercial grain crops. That left some very important collections out in the cold, like the livestock forages (things like clover and lucerne), and Australia's wild relatives of crops. The consequence? Seed banks have had to mothball those collections, ceasing the work of seed regeneration. That means their collections are slowly dying. Seeds have a finite lifetime of years to decades. The worst casualty has been the Adelaide bank which specialises in lucerne collected over decades from some of the worlds' most remote regions, collected by people like Geoff Auricht, the passionate curator, who passed away a few weeks ago from a brain tumour at the age of 49. Two years ago, Auricht had to shut the banks' doors. 95% of his collection is held in no other bank. In some cases these seeds can no longer be found in their endemic countries due to warfare or habitat loss. That's been the case for Azerbaijan. But when they asked for some of their seed back, the Adelaide bank had to decline. That put Australia in breach of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. What happens when Australia needs to borrow wheat seed from Azerbaijan to help out with a new pest? Queensland's seed bank, located in Biloela, stopped regenerating forages two years ago. Biloela boasted the best collection of tropical forages in the world, a result of six decades of collection from South America, South East Asia, and Africa. Biloela has also had to refuse requests from countries that originally allowed their seed to be collected, like Turkey and Papua New Guinea. Another Biloela collection to be mothballed is the wild Vignas, the hardy legumes whose tasty tubers provided Aborigines with bush tucker. Professor Bob Lawn at James Cook University in Townsville collected many of them over decades. His students are making genetic maps of them, laying the groundwork for future breeding programs. Lawn sees these plants as the genetic resources for the future, for a hotter, drier Australia with saltier soils. Now the Biloela bank is slated to close down entirely. Plans are underway to transfer the seeds to banks in Victoria and NSW. The Grains Corp will pay for the regeneration of the commercial crop varieties, like mung beans, but the forages, wild legumes and other unloved species like wild tobacco will be sitting in cold rooms and slowly dying, and so too the expert breeders who know how to regenerate them. Without salaries, they are disappearing. Normally mild-manned agricultural scientists are panicking. They raised the alarm at a conference in Canberra last month. They warned that our banks were a crucial resource for Australian agriculture, both as insurance for the future and to trade with other countries under the terms of the international treaty. Without that trade we, a nation whose agriculture depends on exotic seed, are in trouble. There have been 16 reviews of how to manage and fund our seed banks. The federal government even signed off on one of them. Nothing has happened. Now the Productivity Commission has just reviewed the rural research and development corporations. It proposed a new entity, Rural Research Australia that would target public good, addressing things like land, water and energy research. Perhaps seed banks might get a guernsey here? If you have an opinion on the value of seed banks, the review is accepting comments till November 26th. Robyn Williams: Dr Ella Finkel wrote about seed banks last week for the journal Science. She is also contributing editor of Cosmos magazine, which I see published on Friday something about the discovery of America by Aborigines from Australia. More about that next time.

[Irken]

Wow dude, Idk about you but I don't have the patience to read all that, summarize it mmkay?

[tommo]

It's not that long.... Basically some douchebag of "Grains ""Research and Development"" Corporation" decided he's only going to fund the seed banks that keep commercial crop seeds. (i.e wheat, corn, legumes etc.) And this is causing all the seed banks to go out of business. Even though the government should be funding these places above everything else.

[Carôusoul]

Seeds aren't very sympathetic

[Dannon Oneironaut]

I save seeds. Of course Monsanto is trying to stop that.

[juroara]

Thank you for bringing this up. The biodiversity of life is extremely important, and even more important to us human beings when were talking about the biodiversity of our vegetables and fruits. The average diet is nutrient deficient, leading to diet related diseases. It doesn't help that major farms practice single crop agriculture. It limits our options at the grocery store, and it actually makes the soil poor over time (dust bowl). Biodiversity is important to a good healthy soil, which is important to our crops, which equals healthy food on our plates. Not famines, or pale tasteless oranges. I think the best way to protect these seeds is through education and outreach. Food is something we do everyday of our lives. It impacts us mentally and physically. It creates culture and is the heart of the economy. But how many courses in the public school level are dedicated solely to food and agriculture? How many classes in the public school level are dedicated to the NATIVE landscape? Why not? Why don't we culturally believe that the native landscape, and its native fruits and vegetables are worth learning about? Schools can play an important role in ensuring the biodiversity of seeds. Another aspect of the problem is the perception that gardening is some frivolous hobby for old people. If we had all been taught about agriculture from a young age, our perception of gardening would be entirely different. The capacity to grow good crops is the difference suffering and abundance for most cultures in the world. Without agriculture there would be no modern culture in any shape or form. The abundance that Americans enjoy can be traced back to the source, the seed and the soil. On the flip side, Haiti is one of the poorest nations and can barely feed itself. Seeds = health. Seeds = abundance. Seeds are very important! I don't know how well seed banks help to preserve the biodiversity (I dont even know how they work when seeds die after a number of years). But I do know that gardeners are the forefront of preserving the diversity of seeds. We have heirloom seeds on the market, not because of seed banks, but because of families that passed down the seeds from generation to generation. Growing your own victory garden or supporting organic gardens is a good way to support the diversity of seeds.

[Dannon Oneironaut]

What is also good for the soil and the health of our food is fungus! To help break down nutrients into forms the crops can use and to help the plant absorb those nutrients. We need to also save spores and mycelia in order to preserve the health of our ecosystems. We also need certain fungi living in our intestines to do the same thing for us. Lactobaccilus, etc. Biodiversity includes all kingdoms of life.

[Maria92]

Well, when scientists developed the method for making custom organisms with startling precision, and by continually refining the technology, the need for seed banks kinda becomes unnecessary. If they were to save the genetic code of every species, we will eventually be able to recreate them, and probably in the near future. The nice thing is that all that information could be stored in a massive digital database, rather than large, physical storage areas.

[juroara]

I dont' know what you're talking about Genetically modified seeds still rely on an ORIGINAL seed to modify. The science can only modify the seed so much. It's not like you can take an apple seed and magically transform it into a cactus seed. A genetically modified apple seed is still an apple seed, and even then, it would still resemble the original seed species. Horticulture has done some amazing things to modify plants. Grafting is another method, literally attaching two different species to create one. But even then, grafting is limited. Not all species can graft together. Scientists who genetically modify, from what I understand are interested in collecting the widest possible selection of seeds. More seeds, more variables. More potential. The lack of interest of diverse seeds has nothing to do with seed science, the science supports a diverse culture of seeds. The lack of interest simply has to do with the homogeneous nature of the industry, and its giant monoculture farms.

[Maria92]

Scientists create artificial life in laboratory - Times Online Dr Venter, who has been working on synthetic life for a decade, told The Times: “It is our final triumph. This is the first synthetic cell. It’s the first time we have started with information in a computer, used four bottles of chemicals to write up a million letters of DNA software, and actually got it to boot up in a living organism. They took raw computer data and used it to precisely engineer a working genetic code that they inserted into bacteria that had its genetic material removed, and it lived. If we can map out the genes of every single seed/plant type, the need to keep permanent, long-term storage units evaporates.

[Dannon Oneironaut]

I can't wait until life is obsolete so we can just exist as digital data and not have to eat food or sleep.

[Maria92]

Wow, that's a serious leap there, mate. I'm talking about storing the genetic codes of seeds as data for the sake of efficiency, and in case of extinction of any one plant, not making life obsolete so that we all live in a computer. We can take the genetic codes of the plants as they exist digitally and use that to create real life, working cells. Storing a couple dozen hard drives makes more sense than collecting and storing physical seeds in chilled warehouses that may or may not ever sprout, even if they are needed.

[Irken]

All that information would take up more than just a couple dozen hard drives. At least so I think, there are literally millions if not billions of nitrogen bases to record just in a single organism. This all depending on how complex the life is of course. Why stop at seeds though, record animal life to in case they go extinct.

[tommo]

Well the seeds stored in these seed banks aren't just left there. They take them out before they die and grow them to get new seeds. Also, the major importance of this is to make sure that, if there is a major disaster, we can send seeds to other countries that are specifically evolved to grow in that area; landraces. We currently cannot make seeds from genetic code, nor do we have the code to do so.