A technician dressed to withstand the freezing temperatures holds a tray of seeds in the Seeds of the Future gene bank. The last phase of the process consists of storing the bags of classified seeds in a room with a temperature of -18 degrees Celsius, awaiting shipment to those interested in using them, from the headquarters of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Palmira, in southwestern Colombia. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
PALMIRA, Colombia , Mar 30 2022 (IPS)

As he points to a white shelf that holds bean seeds, Austrian biologist Peter Wenzl explains that one of them, obtained in Ecuador, provided a gene for the discovery that major seed protein arcelin offers resistance to the bean weevil.

The finding made it possible to develop varieties tolerant to this common pest and thus avoid substantial losses in one of the crops that feed humanity.

“Our aim is to do research, to understand the development of improved varieties. The seed bank is genetic insurance for the future,” said the biologist, who directs the germplasm bank of the Alliance of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and Biodiversity International.

They are two of the 15 scientific centers of the CGIAR, formerly the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a consortium of food research organizations promoting food security that is based in Montpellier, France.

The new gene bank, Seeds of the Future, was inaugurated on Mar. 16 with the presence of Colombian President Iván Duque, in an event that also announced a donation of 16 million dollars from the Bezos Earth Fund, created by the founder of U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon, Jeff Bezos.

The facility represents an architectural, environmental and technological leap forward from the previous bank operated by CIAT in the town of Palmira in the southwestern Colombian department of Valle del Cauca.

Founded in 1973, the former seed bank already stored the largest number of cassava (Manihot esculenta), bean and tropical forage seeds on the planet.

Seeds of the Future, the name of the new gene bank, seeks to safeguard global crop diversity and protect the future of food, as well as to study and understand genetic traits to discover more nutritious crops that are resistant to pests and to the effects of the climate crisis.

It also aims to share seeds, information and technology with partners and vulnerable farmers around the world.

The new seed bank, whose construction began in 2018 with an investment of 17 million dollars, has seed modules, a digital laboratory, a seed health laboratory and a laboratory for in vitro testing of cassava.

Of this total, the Alliance contributed 11 million dollars, the Colombian government provided three million dollars and several donors made up the rest. It employs some 60 people, while around 900 work at the center.

In addition, the new facility plans to deep freeze seeds by means of cryopreservation using liquid nitrogen, for long-term storage.

During a tour of the new seed bank by a small group of journalists, including IPS, Wenzl said that with the new facilities there will be more capacity for storage, research and new projects.

The new germplasm bank Seeds of the Future, inaugurated on Mar. 16 in Palmira, in the southwestern Colombian department of Valle del Cauca, has eco-technologies such as rainwater harvesting, a water recycling system and solar panels. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Faced with the effects of the climate emergency on agriculture, such as higher temperatures, intense droughts and the proliferation of pests, the work of the gene bank shows the importance of adaptation, such as safeguarding the best seeds, and the search for improved varieties.

In fact, in its report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability to the climate crisis, released on Feb. 28, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) called for greater diversity in food production.

The IPCC’s demand arises from the fact that climate risks go beyond drought, since by the end of this century almost a third of the world’s crop fields will be unfit for production unless the world reduces polluting emissions.

Since its creation, the bank has distributed more than 500,000 samples from 141 countries to more than 160 nations.

It has done so on the basis of 37,938 bean varieties (46 species from 112 nations), 23,100 forage varieties (734 variants from 75 countries) and 6,600 cassava varieties (the largest number in the world, with more than 30 species from 28 countries).

The material belongs to the nations of origin, but the samples are freely available.

The gene bank also has wild varieties of five domesticated bean species and germplasm from 40 wild specimens. The cassava collection has 250 genotypes of wild species. More than a third of the tuber’s diversity comes from Colombia and almost a quarter from Brazil.

The operations at the new headquarters will strengthen the work with similar collections, such as the 100 gene banks operating in Mexico, 88 in Peru, 56 in Brazil, 47 in Argentina and 25 in Colombia.

The process of storing seeds with the embryos of future plants in the new facility in Palmira, in southwestern Colombia, begins with the analysis of their characteristics, as practiced by researcher Mercedes Parra at the Seeds of the Future gene bank. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Laborious process

When material arrives from a university, scientific center or grower group, researchers examine its characteristics to verify that it meets quality and biosafety requirements. They then inspect its genetic structure, in a first step to reveal properties that can lead to resistance to pests or drought or to better yields.

This information goes to the center’s database and to the digital laboratory equipment, which performs technological feats to collate, sift and correlate the information. The last step consists of vacuum storage in small bags at -18 degrees Celsius, in a process that takes three to four months.

The bank only collects single seeds, to make the effort of safeguarding the germplasm – of which it creates three backup copies – efficient.

It shares each one with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, another CGIAR partner located in central Mexico, epicenter of the so-called green revolution that increased food production in the developing world at the cost of polluting the soil with synthetic fertilizers.

It also sends another to the Global Seed Vault, the Noah’s Ark of future food built in 2008 and located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, and managed by the Norwegian government, the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center.

CIAT, with 400 hectares of land in the municipality of Palmira, near the city of Cali, Colombia’s third largest city in terms of population and economy, has 22 hectares planted with cassava, two with beans and another 10 with forage plants, to test techniques to improve these crops.

CIAT incorporates cutting-edge technology, such as the autonomous robot “Don Roberto”, in a collaboration with Mineral, a sustainable agriculture project of X, the innovation plant of the U.S. transnational Alphabet, parent company of Google. Don Roberto collects data on the status of beans and other seeds critical to global food security. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

In addition, the center has four other research sites on farms in the area to study crops and silvopastoral systems.

A seed holds ancestral secrets and is at the same time memory and inheritance, a reminder of what its family was and a potential announcement of what it can be.

The seed bank also contains a paradox, since the basis of its collection dates back to a time when anyone could appropriate a material and take it far from its place of origin.

But with the advent of biodiversity and species protection treaties in the 1990s, this flow, also intended to safeguard that same biological wealth, stopped.

Today, 20 species are the basis of the world’s food supply, due to the concentration and assimilation of previously more diverse diets. Historically, humankind has used 5,000 species, but another 369,000 could serve as food.

“Many of these materials have been lost in agriculture. In Valle del Cauca there are no longer bean or cassava crops, only sugarcane,” said Daniel Debouck, director emeritus of the germplasm bank.

Another view of the new state-of-the-art building that houses the Seeds of the Future gene bank in Palmira, in southwestern Colombia, at the headquarters of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), where the seeds of the world’s agricultural future are stored in times of uncertainty due to the climate crisis. CREDIT: Courtesy of Ciat-Biodiversity International Alliance

The data revolution in agriculture

One of CIAT’s innovations consists of the use of massive data and artificial intelligence, i.e. the use of computer codes to process the information.

“We work to avoid duplication of seeds and to interconnect the data to improve varieties. If the data yield important information on genes, they can be used for genome editing (cutting out harmful genes),” seed bank researcher Mónica Carvajal told IPS.

Of the total number of materials, 7,000 already have a complete digital sequence; in the case of beans, only 400. This year, the team is concentrating on the series of the entire collection of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) and the tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius), native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico and more resistant to dry climates than the common bean.

“We are interested in finding resistance to heat and drought,” the expert said.

Information from digital sequencing has gained relevance in recent years, due to the advances made by information technology. In fact, CGIAR has a big data platform in place to enhance collaboration between its partners and research.

As part of its strategy to link research and consumption, the Alliance is developing a project to biofortify rice, beans and corn with iron and zinc. Since 2016, they have released more than 40 bean varieties in Central America and Colombia, benefiting some 500,000 people. In Colombia, they have distributed two types of beans, one of rice and one of corn.

The seed bank building holds Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council and the Living Building Challenge from the Seattle-based International Living Future Institute.

Among its innovations, it operates with a rainwater harvesting system that meets its water needs, backed by a water recycling scheme; solar panels that provide half of the electricity; and a pergola made of certified wood that prevents heat accumulation.

The governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima; Deputy Director General, Partnerships for Delivery at IITA, Kenton Dashiell; and IITA Ambassador and Former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo during the donation of 35,930 kilograms of seeds to Borno State government in Maiduguri. Credit: Ini Ekott/IPS

By Ini Ekott
ABUJA, Nigeria, Jun 19 2017 (IPS)

A genetic resource centre run by the Nigeria-based International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has banked thousands of crop varieties for disaster relief and research, holds the world’s largest and most diverse collection of cowpeas, and contains some of Africa’s rarest insect species.

In times of crises when farmers lose their seeds, the genetic resource centre – which the institute calls genebank – provides new seeds that are multiplied and given to farmers. Researchers can also pick from the bank preferred traits they incorporate into breeding programmes.Since plant and animal genetic resources are the foundation of sustainable agriculture and global food security, conserving crop varieties helps prevent “genetic erosion.”

For a continent plagued by perennial food shortages, and a world rapidly losing its genetic resources, the genebank is a precious gift, and its contents are kept in trust for humanity.

“The IITA genebank is one of the most precious resource centres to Africa, in particular, and the world at large. I see it as the pride of Africa,” said Michael Abberton, the head of the IITA’s genetic resource centre.

Since plant and animal genetic resources are the foundation of sustainable agriculture and global food security, conserving crop varieties helps prevent “genetic erosion”, said Abberton, referring to the tendency of losing varieties either as a result of the development of new varieties or disasters.

The IITA’s conservation activities started in the mid-1970s with the establishment of a genebank to help in crop improvement. That bank was later upgraded to provide seeds for people affected by flood, fire, wars, and other disasters.

The genebank currently holds over 28,000 accessions of plant material, called germplasm, of Africa’s major food crops – maize, plantain, cassava, cowpea, banana, yam, soybean, and bambara nut.

The bank has some 15,122 unique samples of cowpeas that come from 88 countries, close to half of global cowpea diversity. Seed samples of IITA’s cowpea collections stored since 1978 are still viable.

The crops’ germplasms are held in trust on behalf of humanity under the auspices of the United Nations, and distributed without restriction for use in research for food and agriculture, the institute says.

Abberton said depending on the species of a product, and its reproductive and dissemination biology, collections are either stored in the field, or in the seed or in-vitro genebanks. All crops producing orthodox seeds are maintained at optimal water content and low temperatures of 5 ºC in short term, and -20 ºC in long term.

At the research level, crops’ traits such as seed colour, resistance to pest and diseases, height of plant, sweetness or others can all be harnessed from the genebank.

The IITA was the first centre to contribute to the new Svalbard Global Seed Vault project, built by the Norwegian government as a service to the global community. The facility is funded by the Rome-based NGO Global Crop Diversity Trust.

In 2008, twenty-one boxes of IITA germplasm samples, part of a first installment, arrived in Oslo to go to the isolated Norwegian archipelago in time for its Feb. 26 opening. In 2009, another shipment was made.

Seeds samples sent to Svalbard Global Seed Vault were large sample of cowpea (also known as black-eyed pea), wild vigna, soybean, maize and bambara.

The IITA genebank based in Nigeria also plays a vital role as a reservoir for response to disaster. It did so on May 22 when the institute donated 35,930 kilograms of seeds to Nigeria’s Borno state government to cushion an eight-year humanitarian crisis caused by the Islamist group Boko Haram.

Borno, in northeastern Nigeria, has been the epicentre of Boko Haram violence. The group is responsible for the deaths of more than 20,000 people and the displacement of more than 2 million – a majority of them farmers.

The seeds donated to Borno government included improved varieties of cowpea, soybean, maize, millet, sorghum, and rice.

They were adapted to the climate of the region with some being extra-early, early, and intermediate, maturing, IITA’s deputy director general for partnerships for delivery, Kenton Dashiell, explained.

“They are also high yielding and resistant to the major pests and diseases, and other biotic and abiotic constraints in the region,” he said.

Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, who as an IITA ambassador made the presentation on behalf of the institute, described the donation as the most meaningful gift ever given to the people of Borno.

Abberton, the head of the genetic resource centre, told IPS the donations to Borno state would not have been possible if not for the genebank that helped the institute in conserving the seeds.

“So, the genebank is a life wire for the IITA and humanity,” he said. He added that the IITA was committed to alleviating hunger and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Heat-tolerant beans at CIAT. Beans and other pulses are called superfoods of the future due to their vast geographical range, high nutritional value and low water requirements. Credit: Ida Karlsson/IPS

By Ida Karlsson
CALI, Colombia, Dec 6 2016 (IPS)

A global food watchdog works around the clock to preserve crop biodiversity, with a seed bank deep in the Colombian countryside holding the largest collection of beans and cassava in the world and storing crops that could avert devastating problems.

On a mission in Peru in the 1980s, Debouck narrowly escaped capture by guerillas.
Plants are the vital elements in our ecosystem that clothe us, feed us, give us the oxygen that we breathe and the medicines that cure us. But one in five of world’s plant species are at risk of extinction.

According to a report launched by experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in May, the biggest threats are the destruction of habitats for farming – such as palm oil production, deforestation for timber and construction of buildings and infrastructure. Global warming is also expected to reduce the areas suitable for growing crops.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that 75 percent of the world’s crop diversity was lost between 1900 and 2000.

“We do not [even] know what we have, and we are losing what we have. Why not try to correct that a bit?” Daniel Debouck of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia told IPS.

Seed bank head Daniel Debouck at CIAT, Colombia. Credit: Ida Karlsson/IPS

Only about 30 crops provide 95 percent of human food energy needs, according to FAO. Dependency on a few staple crops magnifies the consequences of crop failure.

Botanists are already taking extreme measures to save those plant species deemed useful. Some 7.4 million samples are in seed banks around the world, but huge gaps exist.

Way up north, in the permafrost, 1,300 kilometers beyond the Arctic Circle, sits the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a so-called doomsday bank buried in the side of a mountain. Within the enclosure sit more than 860,000 samples, representing 5,100 different crops and their relatives.

And located among green sugarcane plantations near Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, a seed bank with the largest collection of beans in the world is housed in a former meat quality lab. The seed bank preserves some of humanity’s most important staple crops and contains over 38,000 samples of beans in all shapes colors, and sizes. Varieties developed at CIAT feed 30 million people in Africa. Every September there is a major shipment to Svalbard to keep copies at the seed bank there.

Beans can grow despite very tough conditions. They are cultivated everywhere except for the poles and infertile deserts. Credit: Ida Karlsson/IPS

The 300 scientists and support staff at CIAT have a mandate from the UN to protect, research and distribute beans and cassava, staple foods for 900 million people around the world. Altogether 500,000 materials have been distributed so far. After the war in Rwanda, CIAT put seeds back in the hands of farmers.

“The seeds from the Americas are absolutely critical for food security in Africa. Without cassava and beans, people would not manage,” Debouck told IPS.

The researchers have garnered seeds from around the world for their seed bank. On a mission in Peru in the 1980s, Debouck narrowly escaped capture by guerillas.

“But we came back with 300 varieties of popping bean and increased the CIAT collection significantly,” he said.

The popping beans can be prepared without cooking. It is enough if they are heated on a hot surface. This could be important in areas where fuel and kitchen facilities are lacking.

The seed bank also stores beans that can offer climate-friendly options for farmers struggling to cope with rising temperatures.

In the basement of an old lab near Cali, Colombia, there are 38,000 samples of beans stored in minus 20 degrees Celsius. Credit: Ida Karlsson/IPS

The heat-tolerant beans developed by conventional breeding by scientists at CIAT are crosses between the modern kind and the tepary bean, a hardy survivor cultivated since pre-Columbian times. Beans that can beat the heat could be essential to survival in many regions.

“The heat-tolerant beans may be able to handle a worst-case scenario of a temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius. Northern Uganda, southeast Congo, Malawi, and the eastern Kenya are not bean producing areas now because of the heat there. But what we have at present at CIAT could expand the bean production there,” Steve Beebe, a senior bean researcher at CIAT, told IPS.

The new findings would not have been possible without CIAT’s seed bank containing wild varieties and related species of the common bean.

Only 5 percent of the wild relatives of the world’s most important crops are properly stored and managed in the world’s seed banks, according a study published in March by the online journal Nature Plants.

Debouck says there is lack of education around food.

“We think we have food security but we are tremendously vulnerable. If the U.S. would experience drought and Europe would have excessive rains, we would all be in trouble,” Debouck said.

Agronomists used to act as a liaison between farmers and agricultural scientists. But during the last 20 years, many agronomists have disappeared and today mostly for-profit agribusiness firms reach out to farmers, according to Debouck. The companies are often interested in selling agrochemicals, he said.

Bean researcher Beebe pointed out that beans and other legumes are self-pollinated plants and seed need only be sold once.

“That is why the industry is not that interested in promoting them,” he told IPS.