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Modern Day Noah's Ark Dying
hype7 writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running a story about the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development's Gene Bank, which appears to be running out of funding. It seems a terrible shame, because the Bank has managed to accumulate thousands of Australian and foreign endangered species; a kind of modern day Noah's Ark. At the moment it's in limbo, using funds diverted from other projects to keep it in ER, but the prospects aren't looking good."
You don't have to go to Australia to find lack of funding endangering valuable genetic resources; The National Seed Storage Lab in Colorado is in exactly the same boat...er, ark. Read about their funding problems here. An excerpt:
What does this lack of funding mean? It results in another major problem for the banks:
germination backlog, currently of about 30,000 samples at the NSSL. Periodic germination tests
are important to assure the quality of the samples. Also, since seeds will not store indefinitely,
they must periodically be removed, grown out for new seed, and collected. Says Major
Goodman, a crop scientist at NC State who investigated the status of the samples, "Evaluation,
regeneration and utilization are essential parts of a functioning germplasm system. Yet the entire
emphasis...is based upon acquiring larger and larger numbers of samples to be stored in so-called
seed repositories..." A more accurate name, according to Goodman, is "seed morgues." The
samples that are most at risk are older or unusual varieties that are rarely requested, and
germination potential of these samples deteriorates. According to NSSL director Steve Eberhart,
who estimates that it would take 25 years to catch up with the backlog, "We normally test seeds
every ten years to make sure they'll still viable...we've had to eliminate our retesting in order to
process new materials. We don't know which material is deteriorating because we don't have the
staff to the do the germination." For example, there are 30,000 varieties of corn from Latin
America with four scientists assigned to grow and evaluate them. Each person can do 30 varieties
a year, totaling 120. At that rate, it would take 250 years to evaluate them all! Many of the corn
varieties will not survive to be regenerated.