New agricultural gene bank

Press, 9 March 1984, Page 22

New agricultural gene bank

Government approval has been given to proceed with plans for a new building to house a gene bank for the Crop Research Division, D.S.LR., Lincoln.

Dr Michael Dunbier, director of the division, commented that the facility, “was particularly important for New Zealand as we are almost totally reliant on foreign sources of germplasm for our productive agriculture.”

“The gene bank at Lincoln will enable us to greatly improve our collections of wild and old crop varieties and to learn more about the resources we currently have in our collection.

“It will enable us to bring together diverse smaller collections under one roof with much improved storage conditions. “The seed will consequently need to be

regenerated less often and more time can be spent in more detailed assessment of useful traits and cataloguing,” said Dr Dunbier.

The enhancement of alasm resources or reeding” work is widely recognised as an essential step in changing raw genetic diversity into productive new cultivars. Modern computing facilities make it much easier to collect sort, and store data for retrieval in the future, so there is now an added incentive for enhancing working collections. “Our aim,” said Dr Dunbier, “is to develop a system so that any plant breeder can easily access crop germplasm for any particular character trait of any of our major crops. While we have a long way to go to achieve this, the new building is an important step in

the right direction.” In the United States, critical issues in obtaining and preserving genetic resources are also receiving increased national attention. The most notable sign of this growing concern is the Reagan Administration’s 30 per cent increased budget for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s germplasm activities. This is at a time when almost every other federal programme has suffered severe cutbacks.

The new building will provide for long term storage at zero degrees of valuable seed which will be vaccum sealed at low humidity. It will also provide controlled conditions for medium-term storage of nucleus seed of currently used cultivars so that in most cases one multiplication will suffice for the commercial life of the cul-

tivar. Special potato storage facilities will be provided as potatoes must be stored as tubers and are therefore bulky. The building will provide space for storage of material from the collection and the current breeding programme. The Crop Research Division maintains a collection of potato varieties collected mainly from Europe and South America and these must be annually maintained to providee the breeders with sources of resistance to pests and diseases and for agronomic and quality factors. The new facilities will ensure that both the collection and material in the breeding programme are stored Under - optimal conditions thus minimising losses. Construction will begin in June.