L5 Ex-situ Conservation Gene and Seed Banks Flashcards
How many botanical gardens are there?
Around 1600
4 million plants
30% of global flora
Describe what botanical gardens do
Globally contain 4 million plants (80,000 species)
-Many have seed banks as backups to living collections
-Major role in education and research
-Fund expeditions to discover new species, most specialise in particular types of plants
How are plants easier to maintain?
-Easier than animals to maintain in controlled conditions
-Establish adequate sample sizes from seeds cuttings, rhizomes, tissue culture
-Conditions of light, water, minerals easily controlled
-Plants often can be grown at high densities
-Many species can be maintained outdoors
-Plants readily produce seeds, collected and germinated
Describe the Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) case study
-Only found in a remote gorge in Australia in 1994
-100 adults remain in the wild
-Evolutionary relic: other plants of this genus lived 200 mya and became extinct 2 mya
-All genetically identical- suspectable to disease
What methods are employed to protect the Wollemi pine?
-Site kept quarantined and secret
-Plants were propagated in other locations as insurance
-Commercials sale of plants worldwide raises funds for conservation (€150 at Johnstown Garden Centre, Wexford in May 2007)
-Botanic gardens in Dublin has 31 plants
How many plants species are threatened in Ireland?
Estimated 120 threatened plant species in Ireland
-6 on the verge of extinction
What threats are facing Irish plants?
-Changes in agricultural practices
-Mowing of roadside verges
-Drainage schemes
-Overgrazing
-Expanding number of golf courses
Describe gene banks.
-Preserves animal and plant diversity
-Frozen cuts from the plants or seeds are referenced and stored
-Animal sperm/egg cells are stored using cryogenic preservation techniques
-Animals can be bred from gene bank material
-Technology to reconstruct living animal from stored DNA being researched
How many seed banks are there?
50 major seedbanks, many in developing countries
What do seed banks do?
-Collections of seed from wild and cultivated plants
-Generally focus on species for human consumption
-Recently new focus on a wider range of species that may be threatened with extinction or loss of genetic variability
What does ABSs stand for?
Agricultural Seed Banks
What do Agricultural Seed Banks focus on?
-Focus on preserving genetic variability in agricultural crops
-Farmers are abandoning diverse local crop varieties in favour of standard, high-yielding ones
-Seeds are stored and are hydridised with non-resistant varieties in crop improvement programs
-2 million collections of seeds are in ASBs
What is a Landrace?
Is when there is resistance to a disease or pest is found in one variety of a particular species
What species does agricultural seed banks focus on?
-Wheat
-Corn
-Oats
-Potatoes
-Rice
-Millet
Why are ASBs beneficial?
-Rice crops were devasted in Africa by Grassy Stunt Virus (GSV)
-Researchers grew wild and cultivated plants from 1000s of seed samples from global collections
-One seed sample from India was found to be resistant to the disease
-These plants were incorporated into breeding program to transfer gene for disease resistance into high-yielding rice crops
What are the negatives of ASBs?
-Poor documentation (locality, growing conditions)
-Unknown quality of stored seeds
-Poor representation of species important in tropical countries
-Species without seeds or seeds that cannot be stored dry
-Wild relatives of crop species (-2%)
What is the Irish seedbank?
The Irish Threatened Plant Genebank
-Housed in Trinity College Botanic Gardens
What species does the Irish Threatened Plant Genebank contain?
-Includes 50% of Ireland’s endangered species
-48% of its vulnerable species
-31% of its rare species
-Rye (Secale cereale)
-Rare species of barely (Hordeum secalinum)
