2017 Frank Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources Lecture: Stewards of Our Agricultural Future

Abstract

Humanity's survival depends on crops—the green line standing between us and calamity. To meet ever expanding human needs, crops must become increasingly more productive, mainly through genetic gains that exploit diverse plant genetic resources (PGR), the raw materials for crop breeding. For millennia, PGR have been conserved by individuals, communities, and organizations. These stewards of our agricultural future have been nearly as diverse as the PGR that they have conserved. Their invaluable roles in underpinning the security of global agriculture have largely been underappreciated. Furthermore, the challenges and complexity of successful PGR stewardship have been inadequately recognized. This paper pays tribute to these stewards’ characteristic attributes and their contributions to PGR conservation and sustainable use. It describes the pervasive impacts of PGR on crop agriculture and explains how numerous factors have affected PGR stewardship capacities. Plant genetic resource stewardship involves many different components, which are typically conducted over extended timeframes. Sustained, adequate support for PGR maintenance, a key component, has been the exception rather than the rule. Past and present PGR stewardship successes and challenges furnish numerous lessons for meeting future demands. Such lessons include recognizing the importance to PGR stewardship of: dedicated and diverse PGR stewards, continual and persistent financial support for PGR genebanks and their staffs, protecting crop wild relatives, and safeguarding genebank collections from extreme weather and introduced pests and pathogens. In the future, PGR stewardship might be conducted more frequently and more adequately by multi‐institutional networks enabled by advances in information technology and artificial intelligence.

Prospects for Trifolium Improvement Through Germplasm Characterisation and Pre-breeding in New Zealand and Beyond

“…Each time the accession is grown in a trial or for regeneration, it is critical that more phenotypic data is collected to characterise the accession as much as possible in a genebank (Allard et al, 1991). This information may eventually be of use to agricultural needs and breeding programmes (Ghamkhar et al, 2015;Bretting, 2018). While New Zealand invests heavily into Trifolium research, several other countries have also characterised Trifolium germplasm collections.…”

“…Most of the genetic variation present in genebanks are absent in breeding programmes but could have useful variation for future breeding programmes ( Dwivedi et al, 2017 ; Egan et al, 2019a , b ). Although there is increased genetic and phenotypic data on traits, knowledge of all of the accessions in any genebank as a whole, is lacking ( Bretting, 2018 ). When an accession is collected, it is linked with passport data (latitude, longitude, and geographical information), and ecological data.…”

Germplasm exchange is critical to conservation of biodiversity and global food security

“…Many authors identify the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 1992) as an important factor in affecting the exchange of genetic resources broadly and plant germplasm in particular (Bretting, 2018; Brink & van Hintum, 2020; Halewood et al., 2013; Shands, 2004). There are indeed many diverse issues underpinning impeded access to germplasm beyond the need to fund biodiversity conservation, including equity concerns and intellectual property rights (Bretting, 2018; Shands, 2004). The CBD initially linked the funding of critical conservation work to accessing all genetic resources placed under national sovereignty from income derived via benefit‐sharing payments.…”

Time for a paradigm shift in the use of plant genetic resources

“…Several initiatives, such as DivSeek, the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN), the Research Data Alliance (RDA), and the Breeding API (BrAPI) have been established to assemble and ensure the accessibility of state-of-the-art phenotypic and genotypic information (Meyer et al 2015;Halewood et al 2018). In a recent re-view, Bretting (2018) provided striking examples of traits of interest that were sourced in genebanks and that individually bring yearly benefits exceeding $100 million (USD). Although these success stories illustrate the potential contributions of PGRs in breeding, we will argue here that a convergence of technological advances in genome-wide analyses paves the way for an important shift in how we can explore these resources in a more data-informed fashion.…”