The Rural Voice, 1989-05, Page 24SEED
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40 Birch St., Seaforth, Ontario
22 THE RURAL VOICE
The storage of some "problem"
crops has created a few preservation
difficulties. Root and tuber crops
cannot always be stored as seed —
the genetic identity of the crop would
be changed. Either they are "stored"
by growing them in plots or they are
stored as a tissue culture. Both of
these methods involve dealing with
living, growing material. Some
experimentation is taking place with
cryopreservation, or keeping the cells
in liquid nitrogen at -196°C. Similar
techniques are used for plants like
palm and rubber, whose seeds will
not tolerate drying or cooling.
Canadian efforts in germplasm
conservation are co-ordinated by
PGRC at Agriculture Canada's
Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa.
collection of millet. Criteria for the
conservation of these crops are set by
the IBPGR.
As seeds cannot be stored indefin-
itely without loss of vitality, acces-
sions in the collection are grown out
periodically and the new, increased
seed is stored. Sometimes breeders
outside PGRC do the increasing. For
corn, there is an agreement with
private companies, universities, and
Agriculture Canada to do a minimum
of 10 increases a year.
If stocks are low when a request
for seed comes in, whoever is request-
ing the seed, if Canadian, may be
asked to do an increase. Foreigners
who make requests are never asked to
increase seed; if the stocks are low,
the seed is increased by PGRC.
The issue of genetic erosion and germplasm
conservation is not going to go away in the near
future. Instead, its importance is going to grow.
Officially set up in 1970, PGRC has
a mandate for more than just banking
genes. Its other duties include keeping
an inventory of plant gene resources
in breeder collections, collecting and
evaluating foreign and domestic
plants, and acting as a "distribution
centre" (providing information about,
and samples of, plants to scientists
both in and outside Canada). Dr.
Fraleigh, the genetic resources officer,
says that the collection now has about
84,000 acquisitions, with about one-
quarter of them in long-term storage
(the rest are in mid-term).
Deciding which samples to retain
combines the special knowledge of
the breeders, the donors, and the gene
manager, says Dr. Fraleigh. The
breeders set the criteria for most crops
because they are the experts. Corn,
for example, has a checklist of char-
acteristics selected by the breeders, so
that any corn with cold hardiness or
early maturation that is not already in
the collection is stored automatically.
If the corn does not meet the Canadian
requirements, the sample may be
passed on to the international corn
collection, Dr. Fraleigh says. Canada
has world responsibility for two crops,
oats and barley, with a duplicate
Dr. Lyn Kannenberg is a corn
breeder at the University of Guelph
and a member of the Expert Commit-
tee on Plant Genetic Resources, an
advisory board. Since 1974, Dr.
Kannenberg has spent much of his
time on germplasm enhancement,
developing sources that might be used
by breeders.
The breeding effort needed to
broaden the genetic base of a crop is
horrendous, says Dr. Kannenberg,
because it's so difficult to eliminate
undesirable characteristics in germ-
plasm. To avoid problems, breeders
trying to broaden the genetic base of
corn will not use wild -type plants
from a gene bank. They try to get
advanced plants with a genetic struc-
ture different from corn in this area.
Dr. Kannenberg creates a geneti-
cally diverse elite crop by using a
Hierarchical Open-ended (HOPE)
breeding program. Two populations
of corn are grown, with four perfor-
mance divisions in the populations —
low, intermediate, high, and elite.
Since 1974, 750 varieties of corn have
been introduced into this genetic stew
at the lower levels, with the best -
yielding results going on to higher
categories. In this way elite varieties