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From preserving options to exercising options

There is nothing particularly new about the idea that the stuff genebanks conserve should be used.

For decades, plant genetic resources specialists have pointed out that conserving crop diversity is only half the job. If that. The other half is getting that diversity to the people who can use it. Yet the first bit has proved considerably easier than the second.

A new special issue of Plant Genetic Resources is a useful reminder of how difficult that problem remains, and of what it might take to address it. I think we have included many of these papers in previous Brainfoods, but it’s worth exploring the story they collectively tell.

The starting point is not encouraging. A review of 20 national genebanks found widespread weaknesses in funding, management, information and safety duplication. Another analysis found substantial gaps and duplication in national collections, reflecting a history of collecting that was often opportunistic rather than strategic.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Several papers address how to do the traditional job better: a monitoring and evaluation framework for identifying strengths and weaknesses, a robust set of performance metrics, and how seed-viability monitoring can be made more efficient by tailoring it to individual crops. Yet the experience of Sudan’s national genebank shows that even well-managed collections can be devastated by war, making safety duplication and international cooperation essential.

So big problems remain, despite the solutions available, and they matter. There isn’t much point talking about using genetic diversity if we cannot keep it alive, know what we have or protect it from disaster.

But suppose we solved these problems. Suppose national genebanks were adequately funded, efficiently managed, securely duplicated and well documented.

What would we have?

Very good collections of seeds.

That is not quite the same thing as useful collections of seeds.

This is where Cary Fowler’s argument in Reimagining the Role of National Genebanks comes in. Fowler argues that national genebanks should put greater emphasis on facilitating experimentation and use, particularly by farmers. The existence of a wider international conservation system gives them room to do so. Assuming that is properly funded, of course, but that’s another story.

Again, this is not a particularly new idea. Fowler – and others – have been saying it for a long time.

The problem is implementation.

Thankfully, there are more encouraging signs from other papers.

Germplasm User Groups in five African countries increased farmers’ knowledge of genebanks, improved access to crop diversity and encouraged farmers to exchange diversity with one another. A companion study shows how farmers can evaluate large numbers of accessions under their own conditions and identify material that is useful to them, making national genebanks veritable drivers of crop diversification.

A study of Kenyan sorghum makes the point particularly clearly. Farmers evaluated 2,041 accessions, selected 393 with preferred traits, and subsequently chose 46 for seed saving and further evaluation. Their selections were not random. They were what farmers liked the look of.

That is more interesting than simply saying that farmers were given access to seed. Farmers identified what they actually valued.

A genebank knows where an accession came from and how to conserve it. It cannot necessarily tell us whether it will be valuable to a farmer facing a particular combination of drought, pests, soils, labour constraints or market opportunities. Farmers can.

The genebank therefore needs to be part of a process of discovery.

And this exposes the real problem. There isn’t much novelty in saying that genebanks should move beyond conservation towards use. The question is how.

Implementation requires more than a change of attitude, though that is certainly important. It requires information, relationships with breeders and researchers, equitable mechanisms for working with farmers, and institutions capable of supporting experimentation and distribution over time.

It may also require changing how we measure success. A genebank can be extremely successful at conserving thousands of accessions while most of its diversity remains effectively invisible to farmers. Is that a good genebank?

The final paper in the issue, on a descriptor system for in situ conservation, points towards a still broader vision in which diversity conserved in genebanks is connected with diversity maintained in farmers’ fields and natural populations.

We all know that preserving options is not enough. The challenge is to build a system capable of discovering which options are useful, getting them into the hands of people who can put them to the test, and helping them turn diversity into something that makes a difference.

The real measure of a genebank is not just how many options it preserves, but how effectively it helps society discover and exercise them. There are many ways of doing that. This special issue explores a few. Let’s find lots more.

After all, genebanks have options.

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There are no opportunity crops

At least, not in any biological sense.

No plant is born an “opportunity crop.” It becomes one when somebody finds a way to make its particular combination of characteristics valuable, in a particular context.

That does not make the term useless. It can be a convenient way to describe crops whose potential seems underdeveloped, or whose qualities come to matter more under changing climates, diets and markets. But the phrase can also mislead. It can make opportunity sound like something that resides in a species or variety.

But consider the Georgia peach. Today, the US state of Georgia is almost synonymous with peaches, at least to Americans. But it was not always so. The fruit arrived in North America with the Spanish in the mid-1500s1, spreading rapidly through the Southeast from seed, almost weed-like. For generations, peaches were mostly a local resource, made into pies, fed to livestock or turned into brandy.

As William Thomas Okie recounts in a recent piece in Smithsonian Magazine, it took deliberate selection and breeding, better production practices, research, transport and access to distant markets to turn the peach into a commercial industry — and eventually the icon it is today.

The lesson is not that peaches are in any way special. It’s almost the opposite.

When we talk about “opportunity crops” in the Global South, we often seem to be looking for crops that already possess a particular combination of characteristics: nutritious, climate resilient, locally adapted, culturally valued and perhaps capable of generating income.
But why should opportunity be an intrinsic property of a crop?

All crops contain genetic variation. Some of that variation may become valuable because of a new breeding objective, a new processing technology, a change in consumer preferences, a new market or simply changing environmental conditions.

We cannot know all of those opportunities in advance. Nobody knew in advance that the peach presented an opportunity in the American South.

The Georgia peach story also reminds us that an opportunity is not necessarily an opportunity for all. That industry developed within a society shaped by slavery and racial inequality, and its commercial success depended on agricultural labourers who didn’t much share in the value they helped create. If a neglected African crop becomes commercially valuable, who controls the breeding, seed, processing and markets. Who gets paid?

This does not mean that every crop deserves the same investment. Resources are limited, and choices have to be made. But it does suggest that the most useful question may not be “Which crops are opportunity crops?” but rather “Where is there diversity from which new opportunities could be created?”

This is why we need genebanks. They preserve options, not predictions. A crop or variety that looks unremarkable today may contain a characteristic that becomes valuable tomorrow.

Perhaps, then, we should stop thinking of opportunity crops as a special category of crops, waiting to be discovered. The real opportunity lies in maintaining enough diversity across all crops to keep our options open for whatever the future may bring.

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Brainfood: The diverse lives and times of crop diversity

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What is maize good for?

Two pieces of work on maize I recently came across are unconnected as to aim and place, but nevertheless make for an interesting combined story. One asks how far maize yield can actually be pushed by the environment; the other, how far we should define its success by yield anyway.

The first study is a systematic analysis of more than 14,000 yield observations across sub-Saharan Africa. It finds that maize generally produces more grain than pearl millet, even in relatively dry environments. That complicates the familiar story that the traditional, hardy millet simply “beats” the relative newcomer, more pernickety maize in marginal conditions. And you know how much we love complicating a conventional story here.

But, heaping complication upon complication, there is a catch: maize’s performance is much less consistent. Its high yields are associated in part with hybrids and the input packages that accompany them, whereas pearl millet produces yields that are lower, sure, but also more stable. And grain weight leaves quite a lot out anyway: millet brings higher levels of iron, zinc and protein. The authors therefore argue that comparing cereal crops by yield alone can obscure their actual advantage to farmers, under their own conditions. That’s been a recurrent theme with us here, actually, come to think of it.

The Philippine experience described in the second study makes a similar point from the farmer’s side of the equation. In Laguna, farmers evaluating maize varieties did not rank them simply by how many tonnes they produced. They cared about taste, culinary uses, familiarity, nutritional value, market prospects and climate resilience as well as yield. The authors recommend involving farmers in local testing and breeding efforts, rather than treating them as merely the final recipients of fancy new varieties.

Put together, the two stories suggest a useful way of thinking about the potential, and the limits, of maize — and indeed any other crop for that matter. Maize is remarkably productive and adaptable, and the evidence does not support writing it off completely in dry conditions. But its apparent superiority depends strongly on what we measure, where we grow it, and what we put into the system.

A tonne of maize produced with expensive hybrid seed and inputs is not necessarily a better outcome than a more modest but more dependable harvest of millet; nor is a variety that comes out on top in a yield trial necessarily the variety a farmer most wants to eat, sell or grow next year.

Maize can do a great deal, but its real potential emerges only when yield is considered alongside stability, inputs, nutrition, markets and, ultimately, what the people growing and consuming it really want.

Sometimes, in some places, even maize can be an opportunity crop. Other times, not so much. And that goes for millet too.

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Terere, in more ways than one



 		Terere (amaranth) is mainly a traditional leafy green vegetable in Kenya of course…
…and readily available these days in supermarkets.



But it’s interesting to see the grain also used…
…in lots of interesting products.

Quite the veggie revolution in the last 10 years2, but have we now reached peak terere?

I mean, how much more land is there?