Biodiversity research and informatics in Bioversity International

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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

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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
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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.

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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
• Botanical-agronomic expeditions to collect seeds
  worldwide
• The world's largest collection of plant seeds in
  Leningrad -200,000 plant seeds

                                    N.I. Vavilov
Institute of Plant Industry
Look at the Vaviblog
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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

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11 genebanks among the 15 international
agricultural research centres of CGIAR
450,000 samples distributed in one year
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On farm and in situ conservation projects

• Biodiversity is best conserved in the context of
  the social networks, local institutions and
  indigenous knowledge

                                             Ma
ize 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
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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
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Generation Challenge Programme

• Exploration of the diversity conserved in CGIAR
  genebanks
• Gene discovery
• 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

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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

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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

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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 worlds plants.

Reached with Musa itinerans seeds DarwinCore for
genebanks
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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 ?

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Biodiversity, the planets most valuable
resources,
credit M. Hermann/Bioversity International

• is on loan to us from our Children

Bioversity II, 1997
credit E.Arnaud/Bioversity International