Scots link to seed vault that could save a warming planet from hunger
Potato seeds kept for posterity at a frozen mountain fortress could help to combat the effects of climate change, says Dr Glenn Bryan
Deep inside an ice-covered mountain fortress, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, lies a precious agricultural resource that could make a huge difference to human survival on this planet, or other planets, in the future. This underground treasury, the Global Seed Vault, is the world’s largest collection of agricultural biodiversity.
The Vault is a safe storage facility for up to four and a half million seed samples of crops from all over the world. By preserving duplicate samples of seeds held in crop gene banks worldwide, it provides a ‘fail safe’ insurance against loss of diversity caused by catastrophic climate change, natural disasters or human conflicts. It was established in 2008 and is supported by the Crop Trust.
As of February, the Vault now contains a uniquely scottish resource, and the first-ever consignment by a UK institution: potato seeds from the Commonwealth Potato Collection (CPC), an irreplaceable repository of potato ‘genetic resources’ based at the James Hutton Institute. They are part of a major intake of some 50,000 samples, critical to ensuring crops are available today and in the future.
The potato is the fourth most important food crop in the world with major expansion in countries such as China and India. It’s not just highly-nutritious and healthy but also, if managed properly and using the right varieties, yields the most food per unit area.
The CPC forms a vital component of the potato research and breeding activities at the James Hutton Institute. Established in the 1930s by British botanists and collectors, the CPC is a potent source of genes against new disease threats as well as for mitigating the effects of climate change. Its resources have been used to breed well-known varieties such as Lady Balfour, Vales Sovereign and Mayan Gold.
The collection comprises approximately 1,600 ‘accessions’ of seeds from Central and South America throughout the 20th century.
CPC resources represent both ‘wild relatives’ and primitive cultivated potato types still grown in Latin America. These are used to study various traits, such as resistance to pests and pathogens. Notable is potato blight, which caused the highly destructive famine in Ireland in the 19th century.
Many sources of resistance to blight have been found in the CPC, primarily among species from Mexico, where the pathogen originated. The study and use in breeding of such resistance sources normally involves crossing the relevant species with a more typical cultivated type of potato, eventually leading to production of resistant varieties.
Several different types of wild potato from the CPC have been used in this way, and ongoing research is aimed at finding new sources of resistance to many disease threats.
For now, the most effective approach to blight is tactical spraying according to the newly-established Hutton Criteria for predicting blight pressure.
Another major focus is to identify species of potato most tolerant to drought and high temperatures, both likely to occur as a consequence of climate change.
This involves screening species from the CPC using various novel experimental techniques.
A big factor in using potato genetic information has been the unravelling of the potato genome by a major international research effort in 2011, in which the James Hutton Institute played a leading part. This work has been a game changer. Now we know the complete structure of a potato’s genome we can make even better use of the resources held in the CPC. Efforts are now underway to obtain the genome sequence of other potato species, which will lead to important insights into the evolution and origins of this major crop.
As a first step, Hutton scientists are involved in an ambitious project to carry out genetic analysis of all Eu-based genetic banks containing
members of the Solanaceae, a large plant family of which the potato is a key member.
The objective is to make collections such as the CPC easier to use in the future, a key step on the road to ensuring enough food for everyone on this planet – or elsewhere – in years to come. Dr Glenn Bryan is a research group leader and potato geneticist at the James Hutton Institute. For more information visit www.hutton.ac.uk.