Biodiversity research and informatics in Bioversity International

1. Biodiversity research and informatics in Bioversity International TDWG 2009 meeting ‘e-knowledge about Biodiversity and Agriculture’ Montpellier, 9-13 November 2009 Elizabeth Arnaud

2. Agricultural Biodiversity • Not just a result of natural selection, it is the result of thousands of years of human activity. careful selection of useful traits by farmers, plant breeders and researchers. Genetic resources are the genetic material that contains characteristics of actual or potential value. A resource is used

3. Conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity to improve the livelihoods of poor people • Plant genetic resources • Animals, including aquatic resources, Microorganisms • Other aspects of agricultural biodiversity.

4. Nikolai Vavilov – 1887 -1943 • Soviet botanist and geneticist • value of genetic diversity in • domesticated crop plants and their wild relatives • 8 centres of origin of cultivated plants • Botanical-agronomic expeditions to collect seeds worldwide • The world's largest collection of plant seeds in Leningrad -200,000 plant seeds N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry Look at the ‘Vaviblog’

5. Collecting samples for ex situ conservation • Bioversity supported explorations • 560 collecting missions from 1976 to 1996 • 221,077samples • 4,300 species distributed in 137countries • Safely conserved in the international and national genebanks, available upon request • Scanning mission reports • Herbarium Specimen in genebanks - digitization

6. 11 genebanks among the 15 international agricultural research centres of CGIAR 450,000 samples distributed in one year

7. On farm and in situ conservation projects • Biodiversity is best conserved in the context of the social networks, local institutions and indigenous knowledge Maize farmers in Timor Leste. Photo: CIMMYT. In Situ Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives Through Enhanced Information Management and Field Application – Armenia, Bolivia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan

8. On line catalogues for crop collections and wild relatives • SINGER • International collections • Sample ordering gateway • EURISCO • European plant collections • Crop Wild Relatives Portal Global Public Goods

9. Generation Challenge Programme • Exploration of the diversity conserved in CGIAR genebanks • Gene discovery • Trait capture for improvement • Linking Passport data, taxonomy to molecular data and phenotype • Phylogenomic tool for plant comparative genomics (I-GOST) • Crop trait ontology • Molecular Breeding Platform

10. Standards and Bests practices for genebanks • Multi Crop Passport data (FAO/Bioversity) • Morpho-taxonomic Descriptors • Descriptors for Farmers knowledge • Knowledge base on best practices • for genebank management

11. Mapping the Crop and wild relatives Diversity • DIVA – GIS package • For national plant genetic resources programmes & regional networks • understanding species' environmental adaptations • predicting species distribution. • map and query climate data. • Free and simple

12. Genebanks and Botanical gardens are partners in conservation Botanic gardens are an important source of crop wild relative germplasm • Millenium seed genebank • By the end of 2009, successfully saved seeds from 10% of the world's wild plant species. • By 2020, secure the safe storage of seed from 25% of the world’s plants. Reached with Musa itinerans seeds DarwinCore for genebanks

13. Why a TDWG meeting with a focus on Agriculture ? • Same information/Informatics needs • Linking biological data sets from all Biodiversity conservation partners • Linking research for food and agriculture with the academic research • Join and/or create groups of interest ?

14. Biodiversity, the planet’s most valuable resources,… • … is on loan to us from our Children credit: M. Hermann/Bioversity International Bioversity II, 1997 credit: E.Arnaud/Bioversity International