Safeguarding and using global banana diversity: a holistic approach

Abstract

The CGIAR genebank International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre (ITC) currently holds 1617 banana accessions from 38 countries as an in vitro collection, backed-up by a cryopreserved collection to safeguard global Musa diversity in perpetuity. The ITC also serves as a vital safety backup and transit centre for national banana genebanks and ensures that germplasm is clean of pests and diseases and freely available under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. In more than 35 years of activity, the ITC has distributed over 18,000 banana accession samples to researchers and farmers in 113 countries. Ex situ conservation of vegetatively-propagated crops such as banana poses very particular challenges. Maintaining the ITC genebank is labor intense and costly. Efficiencies are sought through research and development of techniques on detecting viruses, the genetic integrity of accessions, and on innovative means of safeguarding banana diversity, such as conserving populations of wild species by seed banking. Although the conservation of global banana diversity is the main objective of the ITC, significant value comes from its holistic approach to better understand and promote its germplasm through numerous research activities and resources. Techniques for morphological and molecular characterization serve to identify and describe the collection, while also determining what gaps should be filled by collecting missions with national partners. The evaluation of desirable agronomic traits inherent in Musa spp. are investigated by a high-throughput phenotyping platform, which helps breeding programs to select cultivars resistant or tolerant to biotic and abiotic stresses. Genomic and bioinformatic studies of several banana wild relatives greatly enhance our understanding of Musa genetic diversity, links to important phenotypic traits and bring new methods for management of the collection. Collectively, these research activities produce enormous amounts of data that require curation and dissemination to the public. The two information systems at the ITC, Musa Genebank Management System and the Musa Germplasm Information System, serve to manage the genebank activities and to make public germplasm-related data for over 30 banana collections worldwide, respectively. By implementing the 10-year workplan set out in the Global Strategy for the Conservation and Use of Musa Genetic Resources, the network MusaNet supports Musa researchers and stakeholders, including the ITC, and most importantly, links to the world’s banana-producing countries via three regional banana networks.

The Tip of the Iceberg: Cryopreservation Needs for Meeting the Challenge of Exceptional Plant Conservation

“…This largely reflects organized programs of in vitro tissue cryopreservation for banking commercially important genera and the research that has formed the basis for these efforts. Of the 10 genera with the most articles on in vitro cryopreservation, at least six are being systematically cryobanked using in vitro tissues (Solanum, Malus, Allium, Vitis, Musa, Prunus) [5][6][7][43][44][45]. This is largely to maintain valuable clonal lines, since many species in these genera would not be classified as exceptional (i.e., their seeds can be maintained in conventional seed banks).…”

“…Ex situ conservation has become an important tool for providing a back-up to the world's plant biodiversity resources, and a network of seed banks of major crop species, including rice, wheat, corn, beans, etc., circles the globe [1][2][3]. For those crop species that either do not produce seed or are propagated clonally, a supplemental network has developed of field genebanks and more recently of cryopreserved collections, as with Musa (ITC, Belgium), Solanum (CIP, Peru), clonally propagated fruit trees, nuts (NLGRP, USA), among others [4][5][6][7].…”

Banana seed genetic resources for food security: Status, constraints, and future priorities

“…These contain over 6600 banana accessions conserved in 31 field and in vitro collections around the world (Ruas et al, 2017 ). Nearly 1100 accessions are also duplicated and conserved cryogenically (van den Houwe et al, 2020 ), but only 163 accessions (of the 6600) are of CWRs, and when excluding M . acuminata and M .…”

“…balbisiana , only 41 accessions containing 33 species remain. This means that for many taxa, there are no accessions at all, or only one single genotype is conserved (Kallow et al, 2020 ; Sardos, 2020 ; van den Houwe et al, 2020 ). Not only that, these conservation methods also have significant limitations: in vitro conservation is highly labor‐intensive and requires specialist laboratories and equipment, and material is also at risk of somaclonal variation and infection; field collections require considerable land, are labor‐intensive, and at risk from pests and diseases and weather events; and cryopreservation is highly labor‐intensive and requires large capital and on‐going investment (Panis et al, 2020 ).…”

A digital catalog of high‐density markers for banana germplasm collections

“…These approaches represent increasingly reachable targets for many genebanks worldwide, including the CGIAR international collections (Halewood, Lopez Noriega et al, 2018).For bananas (Musa spp. ), the largest ex situ collection is maintained in vitro at one of the CGIAR international genebanks, the International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre (ITC), comprised of more than 1,600 accessions ( Van den houwe et al, 2020). Then, over 60 national collections worldwide conserve banana diversity and conduct-related research (Figure 1).…”