Crop genebanks are collections of stored seeds and plant materials. Though their existence is not widely known they are key to past, current, and future agriculture production.
Strong genebanks maintain the economic vitality and success of U.S. agriculture, help to meet evolving market demands, and can spur recovery to areas hard hit by war or natural disasters. Most importantly crop genebanks enhance food security worldwide.
World-wide collections hold genetic material for thousands of varieties of hundreds of crops. This genetic variation provides plant breeders material needed to cultivate varieties resistant to disease, pests, and other plant stressors.
As the global market place intensifies the exchange of pests and diseases, access to international crop genebanks increases access to materials necessary for larger seed diversity. In their native habitat, a pest or disease is under some kind of control by other pests or diseases found in that home site. When the pest or disease is moved to a new environment where there are none of the controls found in its homeland, their populations explode and can cause massive damage in their new environment.
Unfortunately many of these genebanks, throughout the world, are under stress. According to the publication, Safeguarding the Future of U.S. Agriculture: The need to conserve threatened collections of crop diversity worldwide, written by the Genetic Resources Conservation Program of the University of California “of the 1,460 facilities housing collected materials, only 35 meet international standards for long-term storage.”
To learn more about this important topic, what is being done to preserve these genetic materials and how interconnected the global community is in terms of agriculture, please take some time to review this interesting and informative publication.
Crop genebanks are a vital component to our food security.