Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
37,482
result(s) for
"genetic resources"
Sort by:
Genetic resources and traditional knowledge : case studies and conflicting interests
This study describes efforts to define and protect traditional knowledge and the associated issues of access to genetic resources, from the negotiation of the Convention on Biological Diveristy through to the Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Nagoya Protocol.
Book
Crop genetic erosion
Crop diversity underpins the productivity, resilience and adaptive capacity of agriculture. Loss of this diversity, termed crop genetic erosion, is therefore concerning. While alarms regarding evident declines in crop diversity have been raised for over a century, the magnitude, trajectory, drivers and significance of these losses remain insufficiently understood. We outline the various definitions, measurements, scales and sources of information on crop genetic erosion. We then provide a synthesis of evidence regarding changes in the diversity of traditional crop landraces on farms, modern crop cultivars in agriculture, crop wild relatives in their natural habitats and crop genetic resources held in conservation repositories. This evidence indicates that marked losses, but also maintenance and increases in diversity, have occurred in all these contexts, the extent depending on species, taxonomic and geographic scale, and region, as well as analytical approach. We discuss steps needed to further advance knowledge around the agricultural and societal significance, as well as conservation implications, of crop genetic erosion. Finally, we propose actions to mitigate, stem and reverse further losses of crop diversity.
Journal Article
Genetic Diversity, Conservation, and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources
Plant genetic resources (PGRs) are the total hereditary material, which includes all the alleles of various genes, present in a crop species and its wild relatives. They are a major resource that humans depend on to increase farming resilience and profit. Hence, the demand for genetic resources will increase as the world population increases. There is a need to conserve and maintain the genetic diversity of these valuable resources for sustainable food security. Due to environmental changes and genetic erosion, some valuable genetic resources have already become extinct. The landraces, wild relatives, wild species, genetic stock, advanced breeding material, and modern varieties are some of the important plant genetic resources. These diverse resources have contributed to maintaining sustainable biodiversity. New crop varieties with desirable traits have been developed using these resources. Novel genes/alleles linked to the trait of interest are transferred into the commercially cultivated varieties using biotechnological tools. Diversity should be maintained as a genetic resource for the sustainable development of new crop varieties. Additionally, advances in biotechnological tools, such as next-generation sequencing, molecular markers, in vitro culture technology, cryopreservation, and gene banks, help in the precise characterization and conservation of rare and endangered species. Genomic tools help in the identification of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and novel genes in plants that can be transferred through marker-assisted selection and marker-assisted backcrossing breeding approaches. This article focuses on the recent development in maintaining the diversity of genetic resources, their conservation, and their sustainable utilization to secure global food security.
Journal Article
Increasing homogeneity in global food supplies and the implications for food security
The narrowing of diversity in crop species contributing to the world's food supplies has been considered a potential threat to food security. However, changes in this diversity have not been quantified globally. We assess trends over the past 50 y in the richness, abundance, and composition of crop species in national food supplies worldwide. Over this period, national per capita food supplies expanded in total quantities of food calories, protein, fat, and weight, with increased proportions of those quantities sourcing from energy-dense foods. At the same time the number of measured crop commodities contributing to national food supplies increased, the relative contribution of these commodities within these supplies became more even, and the dominance of the most significant commodities decreased. As a consequence, national food supplies worldwide became more similar in composition, correlated particularly with an increased supply of a number of globally important cereal and oil crops, and a decline of other cereal, oil, and starchy root species. The increase in homogeneity worldwide portends the establishment of a global standard food supply, which is relatively species-rich in regard to measured crops at the national level, but species-poor globally. These changes in food supplies heighten interdependence among countries in regard to availability and access to these food sources and the genetic resources supporting their production, and give further urgency to nutrition development priorities aimed at bolstering food security.
Journal Article
Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture
Over the last decade, there has been an ongoing revolution in the exploration, manipulation and synthesis of biological systems, through the development of new technologies that generate, analyse and exploit big data. Users of Plant Genetic Resources (PGR) can potentially leverage these capacities to significantly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their efforts to conserve, discover and utilise novel qualities in PGR, and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This review advances the discussion on these emerging opportunities and discusses how taking advantage of them will require data integration and synthesis across disciplinary, organisational and international boundaries, and the formation of multidisciplinary, international partnerships. We explore some of the institutional and policy challenges that these efforts will face, particularly how these new technologies may influence the structure and role of research for sustainable development, ownership of resources, and access and benefit sharing. We discuss potential responses to political and institutional challenges, ranging from options for enhanced structure and governance of research discovery platforms to internationally brokered benefit-sharing agreements, and identify a set of broad principles that could guide the global community as it seeks or considers solutions.
Journal Article
The Genome Architecture of the Collaborative Cross Mouse Genetic Reference Population
The Collaborative Cross Consortium reports here on the development of a unique genetic resource population. The Collaborative Cross (CC) is a multiparental recombinant inbred panel derived from eight laboratory mouse inbred strains. Breeding of the CC lines was initiated at multiple international sites using mice from The Jackson Laboratory. Currently, this innovative project is breeding independent CC lines at the University of North Carolina (UNC), at Tel Aviv University (TAU), and at Geniad in Western Australia (GND). These institutions aim to make publicly available the completed CC lines and their genotypes and sequence information. We genotyped, and report here, results from 458 extant lines from UNC, TAU, and GND using a custom genotyping array with 7500 SNPs designed to be maximally informative in the CC and used a novel algorithm to infer inherited haplotypes directly from hybridization intensity patterns. We identified lines with breeding errors and cousin lines generated by splitting incipient lines into two or more cousin lines at early generations of inbreeding. We then characterized the genome architecture of 350 genetically independent CC lines. Results showed that founder haplotypes are inherited at the expected frequency, although we also consistently observed highly significant transmission ratio distortion at specific loci across all three populations. On chromosome 2, there is significant overrepresentation of WSB/EiJ alleles, and on chromosome X, there is a large deficit of CC lines with CAST/EiJ alleles. Linkage disequilibrium decays as expected and we saw no evidence of gametic disequilibrium in the CC population as a whole or in random subsets of the population. Gametic equilibrium in the CC population is in marked contrast to the gametic disequilibrium present in a large panel of classical inbred strains. Finally, we discuss access to the CC population and to the associated raw data describing the genetic structure of individual lines. Integration of rich phenotypic and genomic data over time and across a wide variety of fields will be vital to delivering on one of the key attributes of the CC, a common genetic reference platform for identifying causative variants and genetic networks determining traits in mammals.
Journal Article
Germplasm Acquisition and Distribution by CGIAR Genebanks
The international collections of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA) hosted by 11 CGIAR Centers are important components of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s global system of conservation and use of PGRFA. They also play an important supportive role in realizing Target 2.5 of the Sustainable Development Goals. This paper analyzes CGIAR genebanks’ trends in acquiring and distributing PGRFA over the last 35 years, with a particular focus on the last decade. The paper highlights a number of factors influencing the Centers’ acquisition of new PGRFA to include in the international collections, including increased capacity to analyze gaps in those collections and precisely target new collecting missions, availability of financial resources, and the state of international and national access and benefit-sharing laws and phytosanitary regulations. Factors contributing to Centers’ distributions of PGRFA included the extent of accession-level information, users’ capacity to identify the materials they want, and policies. The genebanks’ rates of both acquisition and distribution increased over the last decade. The paper ends on a cautionary note concerning the potential of unresolved tensions regarding access and benefit sharing and digital genomic sequence information to undermine international cooperation to conserve and use PGRFA.
Journal Article
Landscape genetics, adaptive diversity and population structure in Phaseolus vulgaris
Here we studied the organization of genetic variation of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) in its centres of domestication. We used 131 single nucleotide polymorphisms to investigate 417 wild common bean accessions and a representative sample of 160 domesticated genotypes, including Mesoamerican and Andean genotypes, for a total of 577 accessions. By analysing the genetic spatial patterns of the wild common bean, we documented the existence of several genetic groups and the occurrence of variable degrees of diversity in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Moreover, using a landscape genetics approach, we demonstrated that both demographic processes and selection for adaptation were responsible for the observed genetic structure. We showed that the study of correlations between markers and ecological variables at a continental scale can help in identifying local adaptation genes. We also located putative areas of common bean domestication in Mesoamerica, in the Oaxaca Valley, and the Andes, in southern Bolivia‐northern Argentina. These observations are of paramount importance for the conservation and exploitation of the genetic diversity preserved within this species and other plant genetic resources.
Journal Article
The Future of Digital Sequence Information for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
The recent debates on the legal status of “digital sequence information” (DSI) at the international level could have extensive consequences for the future of agriculture and food security. A large majority of recent advances in biology, medicine, or agriculture were achieved by sharing and mining of freely accessible sequencing data. It is most probably because of the tremendous success of modern genomics and advances of synthetic biology that concerns were raised about possible fair and equitable ways of sharing data. The DSI concept is relatively new, and all concerned parties agreed upon the need for a clear definition. For example, the extent to which DSI understanding is limited only to genetic sequence data has to be clarified. In this paper, I focus on a subset of DSI essential to humankind: the DSI originating from plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA). Two international agreements shape the conservation and use of plant genetic resources: the Convention on Biodiversity and the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. In an attempt to mobilize DSI users and producers involved in research, breeding, and conservation, I describe here how the increasing amount of genomic data, information, and studies interact with the existing legal framework at the global level. Using possible scenarios, I will emphasize the complexity of the issues surrounding DSI for PGRFA and propose potential ways forward for developing an inclusive governance and fair use of these genetic resources.
Journal Article
The Global Expansion of Quinoa: Trends and Limits
Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) was first domesticated in Andean countries over 7000 years ago. Following the Spanish conquest, quinoa was rejected as \"Indian food.\" After centuries of neglect, the potential of quinoa was rediscovered during the second half of the 20th century. Since then, the number of countries importing quinoa increased, with new producers appearing on the map and quinoa now being cultivated in areas outside the Andean countries. The geographical increase in distribution of quinoa has highlighted the difficulty of access to quality seed, which is a key factor for testing the crop outside the Andes. In this context, research partnerships have helped promote the exchange of quinoa germplasm and have allowed trials to be undertaken in non-traditional areas of cultivation. The number of countries growing the crop has increased rapidly from eight in 1980, to 40 in 2010, and to 75 in 2014. A further 20 countries have sown quinoa for the first time in 2015. In this paper, we analyze this trend and discuss the limits of quinoa's expansion. As commercial production of quinoa is expected to develop, changes in international regulatory frameworks on genetic resources are needed in order to facilitate plant breeding for the most adaptive varieties for each region.
Journal Article