Global Strategy for the ex situ Conservation and Use of Barley Germplasm

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Global Strategy for the ex situ Conservation and
Use of Barley Germplasm

• 10th IBGS Alexandria, Egypt, April 2008

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Global Initiatives on PGR

• 1983 International Undertaking on Plant Genetic
  Resources for Food and Agriculture, adhered to by
  more than 100 countries
• 1996 Global Plan of Action for the Conservation
  and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic
  Resources for Food and Agriculture adopted by
  representatives of more than 150 countries
• 2003 entry into force of the International
  Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and
  Agriculture, ratified by more than 100 countries
• 2004 - Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT), an
  endowment fund, established. Recognized as an
  essential element of the Funding Strategy of the
  International Treaty in relation to the ex situ
  conservation and availability of PGRFA

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GCDT Conservation Strategies

• To define the most efficient and effective
  approach for conservation at the global crop
  level and at the regional level
• To guide the Trust in setting funding priorities
• Process
• Involves collection holders and other
  stakeholders through networks and other
  associations
• Is facilitated by experts in consultation with
  stakeholders
• Gathers existing information on collections and
  is supplemented with surveys and consultations
• Is backed-up from the Trust Secretariat, the
  CGIAR centres and FAO
• Crop and regional strategies 2 complementary
  approaches

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Global Barley Conservation Strategy

• Identify the most important collections of barley
  (covering the existing genetic diversity)
• Determine collectively a global model for
  collaboration and sharing of responsibilities
• Assess priorities for upgrading and capacity
  building, if needed
• Identifies collections to receive conservation
  support over the long term

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Reference or key collections

• Collections on which the world depends
• Substantial size and diversity
• Generally international or regional in coverage
• Secure - managed to international standards - and
  in general adequately funded
• Readily available on request under terms of
  International Treaty on PGRFA

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Other collections to be identified

• Collections that are important (size, diversity,
  uniqueness etc.) and justify support from the
  Trust to assist with conservation and
  distribution
• Collections that, while of less significance in
  the context of the total global genepool,
  nevertheless contain important accessions that
  could usefully be duplicated in a reference
  collection

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Preparation of the Barley Strategy

• Lists of collections and other data assembled
  from sources such as
• Global Inventory of Barley Genetic Resources
• FAO-WIEWS
• ECP/GR - EURISCO
• National/Institute Databases on internet
• Regional strategies completed by end 2006.
  Reports available for WANA, Asia/Pacific (SSEE
  Asia), E. Africa and Latin America
• In May 2067, more than 60 collection holders were
  invited to contribute to an on-line survey. In
  total 25 responses received
• Workshop in Tunis, 4-6 September 2007, entitled
  Global Collaborative Ex situ Conservation
  Strategy for Barley
• Follow-up with workshop participants and others
  to gather additional information
• Development of the final strategy document

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Other elements to be included in the strategy

• Identification of other potential partners to be
  involved, e.g. in storage, characterization,
  evaluation, data management, training etc.
• Identification of major gaps in the global
  genepool coverage and strategies to fill them
• A scheme for safety duplication
• Mechanisms for promoting links to users
• Effective, cross-searchable data and information
  management systems
• Training needs
• Any major constraints to conservation and
  distribution
• Coordination mechanisms (e.g. networking) and
  leadership
• The next steps foreseen in further developing the
  strategy and its implementation

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Tunis workshop participation

• Countries
• Michael Mackay (AUS), Edson Iorczewski (BRA),
  Bryan Harvey (CAN), Jaroslav punar (CZE), Adugna
  Woldesemayat (ETH), Helmut Knüpffer (DEU), Javad
  Mozafari (IRN), Kazuhiro Sato (JPN), Hassan
  Ouabou (MAR), Luz Gómez (PER), Olga Kovaleva
  (RUS), Roland von Bothmer (SWE), Abdelhakim
  Issaoui (TUN), Mouldi Elfelah (TUN), Michael
  Ambrose (GBR), Harold Bockelman (USA)
• Organizations
• Global Crop Diversity Trust Brigitte
  Laliberté, Britta Skagerfält
• ICARDA - Jan Konopka, Stefania Grando, Mohammed
  El Mourid, Jan Valkoun (consultant)
• CIMMYT Thomas Payne
• Unable to attend Vince Logan (GRDC - AUS),
  Richard St-Pierre (CAN), Zhang Jing (CHN), Viktor
  Shevtsov (RUS), George Ayad (Bioversity)

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The barley genetic resources

• Modern cultivars in current use
• Obsolete cultivars, often the elite cultivars of
  the past
• Landraces
• Wild relatives in the genus Hordeum
• Genetic and cytogenetic stocks
• Breeding lines

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WILD HORDEUM SPECIES
Tunis 2007
by courtesy of R. von Bothmer
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Current status
Size of collections 402,034 total
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Barley collections content
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Global barley holdings content
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Overview of barley collections

• 485,000 accessions FAO,1996
• 371,000 accessions Hintum and Menting,
  2003
• 326,000 H. vulgare subsp. vulgare
• 37,000 H. vulgare subsp. spontaneum
• 1,400 H. bulbosum
• 6,600 wild Hordeum species of the tertiary
  genepool

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Spontaneum major collections
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Landrace major collections
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Genetic stocks major collections
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Cultivar major collections
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Regeneration needs

• First priority to be given to wild species and
  genetic stocks
• wild species to be differentiated between
  secondary and tertiary gene pool
• Major collections, such as PGRC Canada, USDA,
  ICARDA and IPK Germany are in good shape and
  germplasm availability is high for all the
  categories
• Urgent regeneration needs
• Eritrea
• Ethiopia
• Mongolia
• Iran
• Peru (for long-term storage)

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Safety duplication

• Prioritization
• Priority 1
• wild relatives
• landraces
• genetic stocks
• Priority 2
• cultivars
• Priority 3
• breeding material

• Suggestions
• Formal agreement in long-term storage
• Include information on safety duplication in the
  Global Barley Register
• ICARDA facilities could be used for hosting
  safety duplicates
• Second level of safety duplication is highly
  desirable. Svalbard Global Seed Vault facilities
  would be most appropriate for the second level
  safety net

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Number of samples distributed
Strengthening links to the users and increasing
effectiveness of the collections is a priority in
the global strategy for barley
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Information and data management systems

• Individual genebanks
• Passport information is computerized in most of
  the collections availability of
  characterization/evaluation data electronically
  is lower. Many accessible via internet.
• Global, regional and specialized systems
• have been developed to link different sources
  of locally curated data
• CGIAR SINGER
• Global Inventory of Barley Genetic Resources
  (GIBGR
• International Barley Information System (IBIS)
• EURISCO (European PGR catalogue)
• European Barley Database (EBDB)
• Database on Barley Genes and Barley Genetic
  Stocks (BGS)

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Documentation held electronically
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Information management recommendations

• Researchers and breeders will require, first of
  all, evaluation data
• Need to strengthen capacity of National Programs
  in documentation
• Development of crop portal is suggested
• Evaluate GBIF approach or other technological
  options for accessing data in collections
• Revision of multi-crop passport descriptors
  (MCPD) should be considered
• Geo-referencing encouraged, important mainly for
  wild material and landraces
• Set-specific variables/descriptors may be
  required, e.g. for genetic stocks
• CGIAR GPG2 project on Crop Registers has started.
  All collections should become data providers for
  Barley Register.
• Step 1 ICARDA will develop the first version
• Step 2 Advisory Group should guide the
  development of system
• The group Mike Ambrose, Roland von Bothmer,
  Stefania Grando, Bryan Harvey, Helmut Knuepffer,
  Jan Konopka, Hassan Ouabou, Thomas Payne

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Gaps and threats

• H. vulgare subsp. spontaneum and other wild
  relatives are endangered, because of habitat lost
  by overgrazing, changes in land use and other
  negative human-induced activities.
• Landraces are gradually replaced with improved
  germplasm, but they are still grown in in
  low-input farming systems in marginal and
  stress-affected areas.
• To assess accurately the gaps in the ex situ
  collections, it first necessary to complete
  geo-referencing of existing collections as much
  as possible and map the collection sites on the
  distribution area of natural populations of wild
  relatives and landrace-growing regions

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Networks relevant to barley GR

• Networks
• Regional networks, Barley Core Collection,
  Generation Challenge Program (GCP), information
  networks
• Global Barley Strategy for collaboration to be
  strengthened
• evaluation networks using common set of
  germplasm (e.g. based on BCC)
• molecular characterization/genomics
• diversity analysis / mapping
• climate modeling
• Suggestion/recommendation 1 GCDT could play a
  valuable role at the institutional or ministerial
  level to help individuals participation in
  meeting and expert panels to put a Trust mark
  on the individuals and networks
• Suggestion/recommendation 2 That the Barley
  Genetic Resources Committee of the International
  Barley Genetic Symposium be re-established
• To facilitate regular meetings and to maintain
  momentum in completing the overview of global
  resources, coordination is crucial. This might be
  a task of GCDT or the Governing body of ITPGRFA.

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Barley Core Collection
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Policy issues

• Barley is included within the multilateral system
  for access and benefit-sharing under the ITPGRFA,
  listed in the annex 1 of the Treaty.
• Countries that are parties to the Treaty have an
  obligation to help facilitate their collections
  of barley genetic resources available under the
  terms specified in the Treaty.
• Most countries represented in the survey are
  parties to the Treaty and 9 countries out of the
  39 have yet to ratify.

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Capacity building

• The following priority activities were proposed
• Training of staff in general PGR conservation
• Regional workshop for database managers
• Genebanks visits and on site training
• Training of trainers in documentation
• Strategies for conservation of wild material and
  genetic stocks
• Training in molecular genetics and taxonomy
• Sequence between activities and timing issues
• Most training and capacity building activities
  are non-crop-specific and possibly also useful
  for other crop and regional strategies

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Strategic approach to conserving the barley gene
pool

• Key collections may be a basis of a global
  network providing diversity to international
  community of users
• Criteria
• structure size, scope, uniqueness
• quality - documentation, facilities, resources
• access accessibility, availability
• Category
• A high on all 3 groups of criteria - secured
  and well resourced
• B high on 2 out of 3 groups - significant but
  may need capacity building
• C more information is needed

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Key collections category A
Total holdings A ca. 240,000 acces. 21
genebanks
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Category B
Total holdings B ca. 81,000 accessions held at 8
genebanks
Category C Total holdings 71,000 acces. at 20
genebanks Additional collections 8 countries
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Next steps

• The Tunis meeting suggested the following steps
  in the implementation of the Global Strategy for
  Barley
• Final version of the Strategy to be circulated
  to the
• Barley Newsletter
• Barley Genetics Newsletter
• Grain Genes
• Opportunities to present the Strategy
• International Barley Genetics Symposium, April
  2008, Alexandria, Egypt
• ECPGR Cereal Network meeting, April 2008, Izmir,
  Turkey
• Barley genetics meetings (regional and national)
• Advisory Group and implementation of the Strategy
• The Global Barley Conservation Strategy
  Advisory Group is constituted of the participants
  of the Tunis meeting

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Advisory Group (AG) and the implementation of the
Strategy

• AG would be responsible for reviewing
  periodically the Strategy assessing its
  implementation, identifying threatened
  collections and orphan collections
• AG could present updated reports to the
  International Barley Genetics Symposium
• A letter should be send to the IBGS International
  Committee from the Trust (Cary Fowler) requesting
  to
• Re-establish the barley germplasm committee
• Consider questions raised in the strategy
• Play a facilitating role
• It was proposed that the Trust endorses this
  group to facilitate institutional commitment in
  its participation
• Funding be sought to hold AG meetings and the
  Trust assistance was requested
• It was proposed that ICARDA act as a clearing
  mechanism and the contact organization. It was
  therefore proposed that the Trust (Cary Fowler)
  sends a letter to ICARDAs DG.

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Acknowledgments

• Valuable contribution to the Global Barley
  Strategy
• development of many involved is gratefully
  acknowledged.
• Thanks are particularly due to
• Genebank managers or barley collection curators
  who
• responded to the Questionnaire
• Participants of the Tunis meeting
• Global Crop Diversity Trust
• ICARDA (Jan Konopka, Stefania Grando and others)
  

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Thank you