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Biodiversity
research and informatics
in Bioversity International
Elizabeth Arnaud
TDWG 2009 meeting
‘e-knowledge about Biodiversity and Agriculture’
Montpellier, 9-13 November 2009
Agricultural Biodiversity
Not just a result of natural selection, it is the result of
thousands of years of human activity.
careful selection of useful
traits by farmers, plant
breeders and researchers.
Genetic resources are the
genetic material that contains
characteristics of actual or
potential value.
A resource is used
Conservation and use of agricultural
biodiversity to improve the livelihoods
of poor people
Plant genetic resources
Animals, including aquatic resources,
Microorganisms
Other aspects of agricultural
biodiversity.
Nikolai Vavilov – 1887 -1943
• Soviet botanist and geneticist
• value of genetic diversity in
domesticated crop plants and their wild
relatives
• 8 centres of origin of cultivated plants
N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry
Look at the ‘Vaviblog’
• Botanical-agronomic expeditions to collect
seeds worldwide
• The world's largest collection of plant seeds
in Leningrad -200,000 plant seeds
Collecting samples for ex situ
conservation
• Bioversity supported explorations
• 560 collecting missions from 1976 to 1996
• 221,077 samples
• 4,300 species distributed in 137 countries
• Safely conserved in the international and national
genebanks, available upon request
• Scanning mission reports
• Herbarium Specimen in genebanks - digitization
11 genebanks among the 15 international
agricultural research centres of CGIAR
450,000 samples
distributed in
one year
On farm and in situ conservation projects
Biodiversity is best conserved in the context
of the social networks, local institutions
and indigenous knowledge
Maize farmers in Timor Leste. Photo: CIMMYT.
In Situ Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives
Through Enhanced Information Management and Field
Application – Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and
Uzbekistan
On line catalogues for crop collections
and wild relatives
SINGER
International collections
Sample ordering gateway
EURISCO
European plant collections
Crop Wild Relatives Portal
Global Public Goods
Generation Challenge Programme
1. Exploration of the diversity conserved in CGIAR
genebanks
2. Gene discovery
3. Trait capture for improvement
 Linking Passport data, taxonomy to molecular
data and phenotype
 Phylogenomic tool for plant comparative
genomics (I-GOST)
 Crop trait ontology
 Molecular Breeding Platform
Standards and Bests practices for
genebanks
Multi Crop Passport data (FAO/Bioversity)
Morpho-taxonomic Descriptors
Descriptors for Farmers knowledge
Knowledge base on best practices
for genebank management
Mapping the Crop and wild relatives
Diversity
• DIVA – GIS package
• For national plant genetic resources programmes
& regional networks
• understanding species' environmental adaptations
• predicting species distribution.
• map and query climate data.
• Free and simple
Genebanks and Botanical gardens are
partners in conservation
Botanic gardens are an important source
of crop wild relative germplasm
Millenium seed genebank
• By the end of 2009, successfully saved
seeds from 10% of the world's wild plant
species.
• By 2020, secure the safe storage of seed
from 25% of the world’s plants.
Reached with Musa itinerans seeds
DarwinCore for genebanks
Why a TDWG meeting with a focus on
Agriculture ?
• Same information/Informatics needs
• Linking biological data sets from all Biodiversity
conservation partners
• Linking research for food and agriculture with the
academic research
• Join and/or create groups of interest ?
Biodiversity, the
planet’s most
valuable
resources,…
credit: M. Hermann/Bioversity International
• … is on loan to us
from our Children
Bioversity II, 1997
credit: E.Arnaud/Bioversity International