CIMMYT seed heads to the frozen north
By Miriam Shindler/CIMMYT
CIMMYT’s Wellhausen-Anderson Gene Bank sent its fifth shipment of seed to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway last week for safeguarding.
Thirty-four boxes containing about 420 kilograms of seed left from CIMMYT’s El Batán headquarters on 7 February for the vault, which is deeply embedded in the frozen mountains of Svalbard. Isolated on the Norwegian Island of Spitsbergen, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, the Global Seed Vault is keeping the genetic diversity of the world’s crops safe for future generations by storing duplicates of seeds from gene banks across the globe.
CIMMYT sent 1,946 accessions of maize and 5,964 of wheat accessions to add to that collection. Over the past several years, CIMMYT has sent 123,057 accessions of maize and wheat, which is essential for protecting valuable genetic diversity. CIMMYT is working with the Norwegian government and the Global Crop Diversity Trust, who manage the Global Seed Vault, to keep maize and wheat seed safe against a global catastrophe.
CIMMYT will continue to send backups of regenerated seed to Svalbard each year until its entire maize and wheat collection is represented in the vault, according to Denise Costich, head of the Maize Germplasm Bank. “Our goal is to have 100 percent of our collection backed up at Svalbard by 2021,” she said. “We continually compile a list of accessions that still need to be backed up; these are new introductions or new regenerations of accessions with low seed count or low germination.”
With more than 27,000 accessions of maize and 130,000 of wheat, CIMMYT’s gene bank is a treasure chest of genetic resources for two of the planet’s most important crops. Nonetheless, the Wellhausen-Anderson Gene Bank does not just help insure against seed loss – CIMMYT actively makes use of these collections, distributing seed, free of charge, to more than 700 partner organizations in almost every country across the globe.
In addition, through the Seeds of Discovery (SeeD) project, CIMMYT scientists are unleashing the genetic potential of thousands of landraces and improving understanding of traits utilized in current varieties. It is providing scientists and breeders worldwide with new building blocks to develop climate-smart varieties for resource-poor farmers that will safeguard valuable natural resources and provide affordable and more nutritious food to current and future generations.
More than 650 people from 75 countries attended the International Plant Breeding Congress in Antalya, Turkey, from 11 to 14 November. The congress was organized by the Turkish Union of Plant Breeders, with help from CIMMYT and officials of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock of Turkey.
Since obtaining official accreditation in 2007, CIMMYT’s Seed Health Lab (SHL) must undergo a yearly audit to detect any deviation ISO/ IEC 17025 (General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories). To fulfill this requirement, on 17-18 June 2013, the Mexican Accreditation Entity reviewed the SHL’s quality system and seed testing protocols, and also inspected its new facilities in the Bioscience Building. It applied international standards on the general requirements for testing and calibration laboratories and found zero non-conformities at the SHL.
With over 50% of Zambian children under five vitamin A deficient, Zambia faces a major public health problem. This has resulted in several government intervention programs including vitamin A supplementation and sugar fortification, efforts which will soon be complemented by the release of three orange maize hybrids with higher levels of provitamin A carotenoids (compounds converted to vitamin A when consumed) developed by CIMMYT in collaboration with the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute (