Seed Banks and Molecular Maps, Essay Example

Unlocking genetic potential from the wild

The Problem

The world population is expanding faster than at any other time in our history. The population of our planet is anticipated as expanding to reach 8.9 billion people by 2030. This will place a tremendous demand on agricultural crops for food supply and the genetic improvement of crops appears as the only visible means to satisfy this need. In order for the approach to be successful scientists will need to utilise the genetic variations as produced by nature in order to sustain healthy and resilient crops. Current research has indicated that there exists a lot of potential in current seed banks and that the real secret of success is shifting from looking for phenotypes but towards that of superior genetic strictures utilizing molecular linkage maps.

Depending on core crop species

Research has shown that there are only a few really productive types of crop species.  The intervention of humans has decreased the genetic diversity in crops and plants and as such making them more vulnerable to disease and reducing resilience.  Nature alone provides the genetic diversity for building strong, resilient and robust crops. The situation deteriorated by the applied use of modern plant breeding techniques. One cited example being Soybeans which has a very narrow genetic base.  Such intervention by man to the natural selection process of nature seriously hampers the genetic diversity process.

Germplasm Resources  

Sixty Years ago Vasilov was credited with highlighting the importance of crop relatives as a source of genes that will improve agricultural production. Essentially moving towards the concept of seed banks that will help to save and preserve the genetic diversity in crop species.  The vision of recognising the important genetic diversity in plant species from the wild ancestor base.  The USA is cited as spending some $20 million per annum on germplasm.  As to date scientists have been relatively unsuccessful in the establishment and maintenance of seed banks. Much of this being due to accessions making limited contribution to modern varieties of plants. As such the scientific practice is still very much focused on a narrow genetic base. The future approach must reflect more on the collection and maintenance of the germplasm. The use of genome mapping genetic diversity will help to create a higher level of efficiency in this area.

Genetic Breeding

Experiments carried out with wild germplasm have resulted in considerable success for the straight-forward concept of transferring inherited resistance to disease and insects. This by identification of single dominant genes that allow for easy transference  by means of elite cultivators.  The screening process involves hundreds of thousands of varying combinations in order to produce highly resistant lines. This means of all the seed crops exploited only a small amount yield themselves as suitable candidates for agricultural production.  Hence this is a very tedious and painstaking approach.

Molecular Maps 

Advances in technology will see increased use of molecular mapping for bio genetic diversity. Certain successes have been made with items like Golden Rice, Tomatoes and a large number of cereal crops. It is molecular mapping that will facilitate the future in seed banks to create the genetic diversity from the genomes of wild species and introduce new gene strains unlocking the potential of germplasm resources