How Can We Strengthen the Global Genetic Resources' Conservation and Use System?

Genetic resources serve as the foundation of our food supply and are building blocks for the development of new crop varieties that support sustainable crop production in the face of climate change, as well as for the delivery of healthy diets to a continuously growing global population. With the encouragement of the FAO and with technical guidance and assistance from the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR), almost 2000 genebanks have been established worldwide for the ex situ conservation of genetic resources since the middle of the last century. The global genetic resources' conservation and use system has evolved over several decades and presents apparent weaknesses, without a clear blueprint. Therefore, a Special Issue (SI) of Plants on 'A Critical Review of the Current Approaches and Procedures of Plant Genetic Resources Conservation and Facilitating Use: Theory and Practice' was initiated. This SI comprises 13 review and research papers that shed light on the history and the political dimensions of the global system; its current strengths, weaknesses, and limitations; and how the effectiveness and efficiency of the system could be improved to satisfy the germplasm users (plant breeders, researchers) and benefit consumers and society at large. This SI provides insight into new approaches and technical developments that have revolutionised ex situ conservation and the use of germplasm and related information. It also reflects on complementary conservation approaches (in situ, on-farm, home gardens) to ex situ genebanks, as well as how-through new forms of collaboration at national, regional, and global levels and through stronger links between public genebanks-synergies between the private breeding sector and botanic garden community could be achieved to strengthen the global conservation and use system. Special attention has also been given to the governance of genetic resources and access and benefit-sharing issues that increasingly hamper the needed access to a wide range of genetic resources that is essential for plant breeders to fulfil their mission.

Collaboration between Private and Public Genebanks in Conserving and Using Plant Genetic Resources

Among the most important users of plant genetic resources, conserved predominantly in public genebanks around the world, are public and private plant breeders. Through their breeding efforts, they contribute significantly to global, regional, and local food and nutrition security. Plant breeders need genetic diversity to be able to develop competitive new varieties that are adapted to the changing environmental conditions and suit the needs of consumers. To ensure continued and timely access to the genetic resources that contain the required characteristics and traits, plant breeders established working collections with breeding materials and germplasm for the crops they were breeding. However, with the changing and increasingly more restrictive access conditions, triggered by new global legal instruments like the Convention on Biological Diversity/Nagoya Protocol and the International Treaty, plant breeders started to establish their own genebanks at the turn of the 21st century. This paper analyses the conditions that contributed to this situation as well as the historical ways that plant breeders used to acquire the germplasm they needed. Public genebanks played and continue to play a conducive role in providing genetic resources to users, including private-sector plant breeders. However, also the practices of the germplasm curators to collect and distribute germplasm were affected by the new legal framework that had been developed in global fora. It is against this background that the complementarity and collaboration between public and private sector genebanks have been assessed. Whenever possible, vegetable genetic resources and vegetable private breeding companies have been used to analyze and illustrate such collaboration. The authors look at reported successful examples of collaborative efforts and consider opportunities and approaches under which such collaboration can be established and strengthened to ensure the continued availability of the building blocks for food and nutrition security.

Critical Review of the Increasing Complexity of Access and Benefit-Sharing Policies of Genetic Resources for Genebank Curators and Plant Breeders-A Public and Private Sector Perspective

Plant breeders develop competitive, high-yielding, resistant crop varieties that can cope with the challenges of biotic stresses and tolerate abiotic stresses, resulting in nutritious food for consumers worldwide. To achieve this, plant breeders need continuous and easy access to plant genetic resources (PGR) for trait screening, to generate new diversity that can be built into newly improved varieties. International agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) and the Nagoya Protocol recognised the sovereign rights of countries over their genetic resources. Under the CBD/Nagoya Protocol, countries are free to establish specific national legislations regulating germplasm access and benefit-sharing to be negotiated bilaterally. Consequently, access to PGR became increasingly restricted and cumbersome, resulting in a decrease in germplasm exchange. The ITPGRFA attempted to ease this situation by establishing a globally harmonised multilateral system (MLS). Unfortunately, the MLS is (still) restricted to a limited number of food and forage crops, with very few vegetable crops. Easy and continuous access to genetic diversity combined with equitable and fair sharing of derived benefits is a prerequisite to breeding new varieties. Facilitated access contributes to sustainable crop production and food and nutrition security; therefore, access to and, consequently, use of PGRFA needs to be improved. Thus, the authors recommend, among others, expanding the scope of the ITPGRFA to include all PGRFA and making them and all related information accessible under a Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) combined, if necessary, with a subscription system or a seed sales tax. Such a transparent, functional and efficient system would erase legal uncertainties and minimise transaction costs for conservers, curators and users of genetic resources, thus aiding plant breeders to fulfil their mission.

The Impact of Vavilov's Concept of the Centres of Crop Origin and Diversity on Research, Conservation, and Utilisation of Plant Genetic Resources Today: A Review on the Occasion of Vavilov's 135th Anniversary

This Special Issue of Plants is dedicated to the eminent scientist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887-1943) in remembrance of his 135th birthday on 25 November 1887 [...].

Sprouts and Microgreens-Novel Food Sources for Healthy Diets

With the growing interest of society in healthy eating, the interest in fresh, ready-to-eat, functional food, such as microscale vegetables (sprouted seeds and microgreens), has been on the rise in recent years globally. This review briefly describes the crops commonly used for microscale vegetable production, highlights Brassica vegetables because of their health-promoting secondary metabolites (polyphenols, glucosinolates), and looks at consumer acceptance of sprouts and microgreens. Apart from the main crops used for microscale vegetable production, landraces, wild food plants, and crops' wild relatives often have high phytonutrient density and exciting flavors and tastes, thus providing the scope to widen the range of crops and species used for this purpose. Moreover, the nutritional value and content of phytochemicals often vary with plant growth and development within the same crop. Sprouted seeds and microgreens are often more nutrient-dense than ungerminated seeds or mature vegetables. This review also describes the environmental and priming factors that may impact the nutritional value and content of phytochemicals of microscale vegetables. These factors include the growth environment, growing substrates, imposed environmental stresses, seed priming and biostimulants, biofortification, and the effect of light in controlled environments. This review also touches on microgreen market trends. Due to their short growth cycle, nutrient-dense sprouts and microgreens can be produced with minimal input; without pesticides, they can even be home-grown and harvested as needed, hence having low environmental impacts and a broad acceptance among health-conscious consumers.

A Critical Review of the Current Global Ex Situ Conservation System for Plant Agrobiodiversity. II. Strengths and Weaknesses of the Current System and Recommendations for Its Improvement

In this paper, we review gene bank operations that have an influence on the global conservation system, with the intention to identify critical aspects that should be improved for optimum performance. We describe the role of active and base collections and the importance of linking germplasm conservation and use, also in view of new developments in genomics and phenomics that facilitate more effective and efficient conservation and use of plant agrobiodiversity. Strengths, limitations, and opportunities of the existing global ex situ conservation system are discussed, and measures are proposed to achieve a rational, more effective, and efficient global system for germplasm conservation and sustainable use. The proposed measures include filling genetic and geographic gaps in current ex situ collections; determining unique accessions at the global level for long-term conservation in virtual base collections; intensifying existing international collaborations among gene banks and forging collaborations with the botanic gardens community; increasing investment in conservation research and user-oriented supportive research; improved accession-level description of the genetic diversity of crop collections; improvements of the legal and policy framework; and oversight of the proposed network of global base collections.

A Critical Review of the Current Global Ex Situ Conservation System for Plant Agrobiodiversity. I. History of the Development of the Global System in the Context of the Political/Legal Framework and Its Major Conservation Components

The history of ex situ conservation is relatively short, not more than a century old. During the middle of last century, triggered by the realization that genetic erosion was threatening the existing landraces and wild relatives of the major food crops, global efforts to collect and conserve the genetic diversity of these threatened resources were initiated, predominantly orchestrated by FAO. National and international genebanks were established to store and maintain germplasm materials, conservation methodologies were created, standards developed, and coordinating efforts were put in place to ensure effective and efficient approaches and collaboration. In the spontaneously developing global conservation system, plant breeders played an important role, aiming at the availability of genetic diversity in their breeding work. Furthermore, long-term conservation and the safety of the collected materials were the other two overriding criteria that led to the emerging international network of ex situ base collections. The political framework for the conservation of plant genetic resources finds its roots in the International Undertaking of the FAO and became 'turbulent rapid' with the conclusion of the Convention on Biological Diversity. This paper reviews the history of the global ex situ conservation system with a focus on the international network of base collections. It assesses the major ex situ conservation approaches and methods with their strengths and weaknesses with respect to the global conservation system and highlights the importance of combining in situ and ex situ conservation.

Plant Biodiversity and Genetic Resources Matter!

Plant biodiversity is the foundation of our present-day food supply (including functional food and medicine) and offers humankind multiple other benefits in terms of ecosystem functions and resilience to climate change, as well as other perturbations. This Special Issue on 'Plant Biodiversity and Genetic Resources' comprises 32 papers covering a wide array of aspects from the definition and identification of hotspots of wild and domesticated plant biodiversity to the specifics of conservation of genetic resources of crop genepools, including breeding and research materials, landraces and crop wild relatives which collectively are the pillars of modern plant breeding, as well as of localized breeding efforts by farmers and farming communities. The integration of genomics and phenomics into germplasm and genebank management enhances the value of crop germplasm conserved ex situ, and is likely to increase its utilization in plant breeding, but presents major challenges for data management and the sharing of this information with potential users. Furthermore, also a better integration of in situ and ex situ conservation efforts will contribute to a more effective conservation and certainly to a more sustainable and efficient utilization. Other aspects such as policy, access and benefit-sharing that directly impact the use of plant biodiversity and genetic resources, as well as balanced nutrition and enhanced resilience of production systems that depend on their increased use, are also being treated. The editorial concludes with six key messages on plant biodiversity, genetic erosion, genetic resources and plant breeding, agricultural diversification, conservation of agrobiodiversity, and the evolving role and importance of genebanks.

The Role of Vegetable Genetic Resources in Nutrition Security and Vegetable Breeding

Malnutrition, comprising undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, and overnutrition, is more widespread than hunger per se and affects most nations around the globe. The diversity and the quality of food produced and consumed are decisive factors when addressing the triple burden of malnutrition. In this context, fruit, vegetables, and nuts are increasingly moving into the focus of the nutrition community. Agricultural policies and investments in agriculture are predominantly focused on staple food production, neglecting the economic and nutritional potential of fruit and vegetables. While global vegetables are well represented in genebanks around the globe, this is much less the case for traditional vegetables. Collecting efforts in hotspots of vegetable diversity in Africa and Asia are required to conserve this germplasm before it is being replaced by modern varieties. Home gardens, community seedbanks, and variety introduction through vegetable seed kits are ways how genebanks can link with the farming community to strengthen the informal seed sector. This in turn may result in more diverse production systems and increased consumption of fruit and vegetables. In the formal seed sector, vegetable breeders need access to a wide diversity of genetic resources, predominantly farmers’ varieties, landraces, and crop wild relatives. Genomics-assisted breeding is increasingly facilitating the introgression of favorable genes and quantitative trait loci (QTLs) with complex inheritance patterns from wild species into cultigens. This will lead to wider use of crop wild relatives in the development of resilient cultivars.

Conserving and Sharing Taro Genetic Resources for the Benefit of Global Taro Cultivation: A Core Contribution of the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees

This review article gives an account of the origin, domestication, and dispersal of taro, a staple food crop in many countries in the humid tropics and subtropics. Genetic diversity studies indicated that distinct gene pools exist in all the regions where taro may be naturally distributed-the Indian subcontinent, China, Southeast Asia, and in Oceania. The Asian gene pool presented the highest genetic diversity. Diploid taro is prevalent in the Pacific Islands, while both diploids and triploids are found in mainland Asia. Triploids are thought to provide better adaptability and enhanced hardiness to higher altitudes and latitudes where sexual reproduction is not viable. The Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees (CePaCT) conserves in vitro close to 70% of the taro genetic resources held ex situ and is therefore considered the world center for taro genetic resources. Phytophthora colocasiae or taro leaf blight (TLB) is the most severe disease of taro' causing 25%-50% yield losses and postharvest decay of corms. The CePaCT genebank supported the participatory TLB breeding program in Samoa through the provision of diverse taro germplasm from the Asian gene pool. However, CePaCT not only serves taro producers in the Pacific but also shares new allelic diversity of taro globally. More recent distributions of taro genetic diversity to West and Central Africa were in response to an outbreak and spread of TLB in West Africa. Global dissemination of taro genetic diversity is assisting producer countries in the process of adaptation to emerging biotic and abiotic stresses, exacerbated by climate change.

Nutritional composition of mungbean and soybean sprouts compared to their adult growth stage

This study determined the level of phytonutrients in mungbean and soybean sprouts compared to mature mungbean grain and vegetable soybean. The comparison included landraces and improved mungbean and soybean varieties to assess the effect of breeding on the phytonutrient content of both crops. Sprouting mungbean enhanced vitamin C content 2.7-fold compared to mature mungbean grain. Relatively old mungbean accessions were superior in protein, calcium (Ca), iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), carotenoid and vitamin C content compared to improved mungbean lines at the fully mature stage. With regard to nutritional value, the vegetable soybean stage was superior to soybean sprouts in terms of content of protein (14% increase), Zn (45%), Ca (72%), and Fe (151%). Isoflavones, reported to have beneficial effects on human health, are found at high concentrations in soybean sprouts and could easily provide the recommended anticarcinogenic dose range from 1.5 to 2.0mg/kg of body weight per day.

Vitamin C and reducing sugars in the world collection of Capsicum baccatum L. genotypes

This study aimed to analyze 123 genotypes of Capsicum baccatum L. originating from 22 countries, at two stages of fruit development, for vitamin C content and its relationship with reducing sugars in fruit pericarp. Among the parametric population, vitamin C and reducing sugar concentrations ranged between 2.54 to 50.44 and 41-700mgg(-1) DW of pericarp, respectively. Overall, 14 genotypes accumulated 50-500% of the RDA of vitamin C in each 2g of fruit pericarp on a dry weight basis. Compared with ripened fruits, matured (unripened) fruits contained higher vitamin C and lower reducing sugars. About 44% variation in the vitamin C content could be ascribed to levels of reducing sugars. For the first time, this study provides comprehensive data on vitamin C in the world collection of C. baccatum genotypes that could serve as a key resource for food research in future.

Variations in DREB1A and VP1.1 Genes Show Association with Salt Tolerance Traits in Wild Tomato (Solanum pimpinellifolium)

Association analysis was conducted in a core collection of 94 genotypes of Solanum pimpinellifolium to identify variations linked to salt tolerance traits (physiological and yield traits under salt stress) in four candidate genes viz., DREB1A, VP1.1, NHX1, and TIP. The candidate gene analysis covered a concatenated length of 4594 bp per individual and identified five SNP/Indels in DREB1A and VP1.1 genes explaining 17.0% to 25.8% phenotypic variation for various salt tolerance traits. Out of these five alleles, one at 297 bp in DREB1A had in-frame deletion of 6 bp (CTGCAT) or 12 bp (CTGCATCTGCAT), resulting in two alleles, viz., SpDREB1A_297_6 and SpDREB1A_297_12. These alleles individually or as haplotypes accounted for maximum phenotypic variance of about 25% for various salt tolerance traits. Design of markers for selection of the favorable alleles/haplotypes will hasten marker-assisted introgression of salt tolerance from S. pimpinellifolium into cultivated tomato.

The AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center mungbean (Vigna radiata) core and mini core collections

Background

Large ex situ germplasm collections generally harbor a wide range of crop diversity. AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center is holding in trust the world’s second largest mungbean (Vigna radiata) germplasm collection with more than 6,700 accessions. Screening large collections for traits of interest is laborious and expensive. To enhance the access of breeders to the diversity of the crop, mungbean core and mini core collections have been established.

Results

The core collection of 1,481 entries has been built by random selection of 20% of the accessions after geographical stratification and subsequent cluster analysis of eight phenotypic descriptors in the whole collection. Summary statistics, especially the low differences of means, equal variance of the traits in both the whole and core collection and the visual inspection of quantile-quantile plots comparing the variation of phenotypic traits present in both collections indicated that the core collection well represented the pattern of diversity of the whole collection. The core collection was genotyped with 20 simple sequence repeat markers and a mini core set of 289 accessions was selected, which depicted the allele and genotype diversity of the core collection.

Conclusions

The mungbean core and mini core collections plus their phenotypic and genotypic data are available for distribution to breeders. It is expected that these collections will enhance the access to biodiverse mungbean germplasm for breeding.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1556-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.