Posts

Posted on

Do crop descriptors really rule the world?

Helen Anne Curry and Sabina Leonelli’s chapter in Agricultural Science as International Development: Historical Perspectives on the CGIAR Era, entitled “Crop Descriptors and the Forging of ‘System-Wide’ Research in CGIAR,” advances a provocative argument: IBPGR’s famous, even iconic, standardized descriptor lists — the shared controlled vocabularies used to record traits like plant height, fruit shape and disease resistance in many genebanks around the world — were never just a neutral book-keeping exercise. By 1997, the authors note, something like 80% of genebank curators were using them. Those that didn’t risked being marginalized and excluded from other activities.

The implication is that what seemed like rather “boring” infrastructure quietly decided which traits got noticed, valued and studied, and thus whose priorities counted in the process of conservation and use of plant genetic resources. But not just conservation and use of plant genetic resources. No, descriptors in effect helped drive CGIAR’s whole research agenda for 30 years:

We argue that the project of producing descriptors both defined and embodied CGIAR institutional identity and objectives as these evolved from the 1970s to the 2000s.

I have some sympathy with some of this, not gonna lie. Standards are never innocent or neutral, and it’s a useful corrective to point out that coding conventions, qualitative state labels and data formats can carry as much institutional power as more seemingly consequential, not to say exciting, technical interventions.

But I think the authors overstate their case. Here’s why.

First, this is actually mostly a genebank story, not a user story. The 80% adoption figure is about curators describing accessions; not breeders, researchers or indeed farmers actually drawing on that data downstream. Compliance at the genebank end tells us the descriptor system succeeded as a curation standard. Cool. But it tells us hardly anything about whether it shaped research agendas out in the world, where the more interesting and complex power dynamics actually play out.

And it’s also more of an IBPGR story than a CGIAR story. The descriptor-list project was driven by IBPGR (and its successors IPGRI/Bioversity), the CGIAR center dedicated to plant genetic resources, not by the commodity-breeding centers like CIMMYT or IRRI, whose own research and breeding agendas the chapter wants the descriptors to somehow explain. Treating a program run by one specialized center, albeit with inputs from other centers, as evidence of a system-wide CGIAR phenomenon is over-reaching.

In any case, few people actually use the lists unchanged. In practice, the published descriptor lists tended to function more as a starting template than a straitjacket. Genebanks still routinely add, drop or modify descriptors. Breeding programs often have their own. If actual practical use diverges from the nominal standard as often as it seems to, the claim that descriptors forged a unified CGIAR research agenda needs more evidence. A lot more evidence.

Finally, the aggregation infrastructure barely exists, alas. If descriptors were really operating as a powerful, SPECTRE-like mechanism of control, you’d expect a robust ecosystem of databases pulling together and cross-referencing that data at scale. So where is it? In reality, apart from passport data (the basic what/where/when information about an accession) there are strikingly few databases that aggregate and share descriptor data across genebanks. A standard that isn’t widely aggregated or queried in practice is a much weaker lever on research priorities than the chapter’s framing suggests.

None of this undoes the chapter’s central insight — that standardization is a form of power, and it’s always useful to know who’s wielding power and how. But I’d recommend scaling back the empirical claim. To me, descriptors don’t look like a means to surreptitiously run global agricultural research; they look like a partial, un-enforceable, unevenly-followed standard that genebanks voluntarily adopted because it seemed like a good idea, without it much affecting what happens next.

Which is not to say that it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if descriptors were in fact more deeply and widely adopted, rigorously enforced and consistently used. That would make genebanks better run and more useful, I think. But it still wouldn’t help them, or CGIAR, take over the world, Blofeld-like, cat in lap.

Posted on

Brainfood: Tree conservation from assisted migration to cryo

Posted on

Data is not the destination

Mike Jackson’s account of the early molecular work at IRRI’s International Rice Genebank is a nice reminder that the idea of the “genomic genebank” (as he calls it) is not as new as it may sounds. In the 1990s, RAPD and AFLP markers were already being used to identify duplicates, reveal genetic structure and, more ambitiously, to predict which accessions might possess useful traits. It’s the continuation of the trajectory I traced in my recent post on descriptors: from names and human-scored traits to photographs, digital phenotypes, molecular markers and now genomic information, each adding a layer of information that makes the collection more searchable and usable. The question keeps shifting from “what do we have?” to “which of what we have might be useful?”

Jackson’s story is also a key piece of the argument I tried to make in another recent post: preserving options is only the beginning. More, and better, information makes options easier to discover, but discovering an option is not the same as exercising it. The harder question is what happens next: how do we turn knowledge about what’s in a collection into actual selection, testing, breeding, adoption and impact? Data can open the door to better use of genebank collections. It cannot walk through it for us.

And there is a danger here. As our information about genebank collections becomes ever more layered, richer and more precise, it can start to look as though we’re solving the problem of use. We are not. We are solving the problem of finding possibilities. That’s only one part of the journey. A genomic prediction is not a breeding line; a photograph is not a phenotype under farmers’ conditions. The distance between knowing an option exists and actually exercising it still has to be travelled. That is a social and institutional process as much as a biological and technological one, and it starts only when the search is over.

Posted on

When farming worlds collide

When we think about crops moving around the world — and we often do around here — the Columbian Exchange is the canonical example, and why not? The transatlantic movement of maize, potatoes, tomatoes, cassava, and chili peppers to Europe, Africa and Asia, and of wheat, sugar, coffee, and livestock to the Americas, was profoundly transformative. It reshaped global agriculture and diets more dramatically than any single event in human history after the Neolithic.

But similar, if maybe smaller-scale, “exchanges” happened long before 1492. The deep history of agriculture features several ancient “mixing bowls,” let’s call them, where traditions from different geographic origins met and interacted in fascinating ways. These are natural experiments in how new crops become part of diversified farming systems, and I think they can be especially useful in thinking about “opportunity crops.”

Usually, by opportunity crops we mean local or regional crops that were perhaps once more important, and then declined. Or, even if they were never very important, they could still do more, given the chance, whether for diets or incomes, or resilience: indigenous fruits and vegetables, forgotten grains, traditional tubers, you know the kind of thing. Their local resurgence is a crucial path to diversification, for sure. But those agricultural mixing bowls suggest that crops from the outside also have a role in enriching local farming.

Five ancient agricultural mixing bowls

Archaeologists and archaeobotanists have identified a number of major regions where independently domesticated crops were brought into contact, whether by people moving around, or just their seeds. Here’s a selection:

Central Asia. From the late 3rd millennium BC, Central Asia became a major corridor for crops moving between East, South and West Asia. Wheat and barley travelled eastward from the Near East, while broomcorn and foxtail millet moved westward from China; over time, rice and other crops also joined this exchange. The region saw repeated, selective movement of individual crops through networks linking different farming systems.

Yunnan. In southwest China, rice and millet farming was established by the 3rd millennium BC. From the mid-2nd millennium BC, wheat and barley arrived from farther west, probably through contact with or movement of western Chinese agropastoralists. At Haimenkou, farmers combined the newcomers with existing rice–millet agriculture, eventually developing an increasingly diversified system in which wheat became particularly important.

East Africa. Local crops such as sorghum and finger millet developed alongside, and later interacted with, crops of Southwest Asian origin, including wheat and barley, and later even banana from Southeast Asia. Archaeobotanical evidence from Ethiopia shows that agricultural repertoires changed over time rather than arriving as fixed packages: the pattern is one of successive additions and local reconfiguration of crop repertoires.

The Caribbean. Over centuries, island farmers assembled repertoires from different parts of the Americas. Maize and beans arrived from Mesoamerica, while cassava and sweet potato came from South America, alongside locally important plants and wild resources.

Island Southeast Asia. New Guinea had an indigenous tradition of plant management and cultivation thousands of years before the Austronesian expansion. From about 3500 years ago, Austronesian-speaking communities moving through Island Southeast Asia and the western Pacific brought additional crops, animals and cultivation practices into contact with these established systems.

What can these contact zones teach us about diversification?

Viewed through the lens of opportunity crops, these experiments in diversification make a number of important points.

First, diversification has always involved both local and external crops. In East Africa, farmers did not choose between African sorghum and West Asian wheat; they grew both, in complementary niches. In Yunnan, rice and millet from China were later joined by wheat and barley from the west, creating more complex rotations. Foreign crops didn’t erase local ones; they expanded the menu.

Second, introduced crops work best when they fill gaps or add options, rather than trying to replace everything. In Central Asia, wheat and barley fit into winter slots; rice and millets into summer. Diversification succeeded when new crops complemented existing systems, instead of competing with them head-on.

Third, diversification is iterative and cumulative. Crops didn’t arrive all at once; they layered over time. In Yunnan, rice and millet came first, then wheat and barley centuries later. In East Africa, African cereals were already established before wheat and barley arrived. Farmers added, adjusted, and integrated new crops into existing systems. For today’s opportunity crops, that suggests we don’t need perfect, wholesale redesigns. Small, incremental additions — whether local or external — can gradually build more resilient, diverse farming systems.

Fourth, diversification is place-specific. The same new crops played different roles in different settings. Wheat and barley complemented rice and millet in Central Asia’s winter/summer rotation, but in East Africa they filled different niches alongside sorghum and teff. External crops won’t have the same impact everywhere. Success depends on matching crops to local ecologies, existing rotations and farmers’ own priorities. We don’t need a universal “next big crop,” even if it existed.

The overarching lesson, I believe, should be that “local” and “introduced” are not enemies. Strengthening local crops doesn’t mean shutting out ones from elsewhere. Ancient farmers diversified by adapting crops from different origins into coherent systems. If we want resilient, diverse farming today, we’ll need the same mindset: local crops coming back stronger, yes; but also give room to well-chosen outsiders that add new options, seasons, and uses.

The Columbian Exchange was extraordinary in scale, but it sits on a much deeper history of smaller, slower and often more subtle crop exchanges. They made agriculture what it is today. Their lessons could help us transform it in the future.

Posted on

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 the journal 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 Brainfood over the past few weeks, 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 describe 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 that are being developed, 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 itself is properly funded, of course, but that’s another story.

Let me repeat: this is not a particularly new idea. Fowler – and others – have been saying it for a long time. The problem is getting it done.

Thankfully, again there are encouraging signs from other papers in this special issue.

One describes how 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 gingerly 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 couple. Let’s find lots more.

After all, genebanks have options.