Essay Plants as Digital Things The Global Circulation of Future Breeding Options and their Storage in Gene Banks (original) (raw)
Related papers
2016
: Seeds have traditionally been collected according to their reproductive cycles, i.e. the time when they lose their potential of becoming a real plant. Therefore, the locations of botanic gardens or seed banks imply the vicinity of agricultural land. This article exemplifies the transformation of plant collections into gene and data banks by investigating the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) in Norway and the German Genebank for Fruit Crops (DGO). It shows that international efforts to safeguard biodiversity by intertwining them with bioinformatics infrastructure transform seeds and other plant genetic material into digitalized objects. The almost virtual genetic material, now stored without the neighborhood of acres or gardens, is, at the same time, seen as “options” for new high-tech plants, which might be transplanted to a future territory. Consequently, plant varieties are circulating around the globe in form of genetic material and data. The article shows that the digitalizat...
The Journal of World Intellectual Property, 2020
The decoupling of biological information from its material source has changed debates about global access and benefit sharing (ABS) of genetic resources. What does the digitization of biological information imply for genetic resources of proven and potential value? What implications does digital sequence information (DSI) have for individuals and groups, who have invested time and effort in augmenting and refining valuable characteristics in genetic resources? Stakeholders discussing this issue in various international fora unanimously acknowledge there are currently more questions than answers. Online digital publicly accessible resources represent a transformative technological shift, resulting in intellectual property governance gaps. This article provides interdisciplinary perspectives on options available to governments to continue advancing the goals of ABS, when physical access to genetic resources is no longer needed because DSI is readily accessible. It envisions four governance scenarios.
Biofacts, Bioprospecting, Biobanking: A Reality Check of Seed Banks
TechnoScienceSociety, 2020
Agriculture produces hybrid forms of nature and technology, philosophically termed “biofacts”. As agriculture is the prototype of culture as such, it may be a fruitful candidate for investigating TechnoScienceSocieties. Every making of a biofact starts by controlling the seed. The chapter focuses on the material objects of technological change, i.e. high tech plants, and the premodelling of their beginnings by seed or gene banks. Seed banks are introduced as large technological systems that function as infrastructures of both agriculture and bioeconomy. The cases of Germany and Italy exemplify some of the historical shifts seed banks faced regarding technology, norms and time politics, and how these shifts influenced the concept of “seed”, e.g. by cryoconservation technologies and implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
2019
Currently, the CGIAR conserve more than 700,000 accessions of crop, trees and forage germplasm, both in the centers' genebanks and in the Svalbald Global Seed Vault. These Ex Situ collections are actively regenerated and preserved in compliance to national and international phytosanitary regulatory requirements for international exchange. CG centers work to characterize, evaluate and improve PGRs, and engage in capacity building, knowledge sharing and technology transfers with farmers and scientists in developing countries to foster PGR sustainable use. CG centers actively participate the Plant Treaty meeting and negotiations. Ultimately, they contribute to identify strategies for resources mobilization for the functioning of the MLS. In 2006, the Crop Trust established by Bioversity International and the CGIAR was recognized as an essential element of the Funding Strategy of the Plant Treaty 3 , in relation to the ex situ conservation and
2008
The overall goal of the project “Global Information on Germplasm Accessions” is to improve access by breeders and other users to the germplasm they need in gene banks around the world. The project covers all major food crops, with a focus on 22 crops: banana, barley, beans, breadfruit, cassava, chickpea, coconut, cowpea, faba bean, finger millet, grass pea, maize, major aroids, lentil, pearl millet, pigeon pea, potato, rice, sorghum, sweet potato, wheat, and yam, and a limited number of other crops of interest to the project collaborators.
Stealing into the wild: conservation science, plant breeding and the makings of new seed enclosures
The Journal of Peasant Studies , 2017
Faced with pressing climatic changes, scientific and industrial interests are vying to develop crops that can survive drought, floods and shifting pest regimes. Increasingly, they look for solutions in an unlikely place: the gene pools of wild plants. Crop wild relatives (CWR) – species closely related to crops, including their ancestors – offer breeders the allure of retracing the domestication bottleneck, infusing genomes of modern crops with ‘lost’ genetic variety. Yet wild relatives also confront threats from climate change, urbanization and expansion of industrial agrifood. Thus, CWR, seen as both salvational and threatened, have become an international conservation and food-security priority. It is my contention that, in their common project to harness wild-relative potential, conservation and breeding science are co-evolving to extend seed commodity relations into new spheres. I examine enclosures along two fronts: first within ‘systematic CWR conservation’, where ‘in situ’ approaches, typically regarded as empowering and sustainable alternatives to ‘ex situ’, instead may support a complementary system of value extraction; second, in breeding and biotechnology research, which produces new value for CWR while profoundly shaping upstream conservation priorities. An important finding is that although today’s ‘ex situ-centric’ complementarity favors dispossession, an ‘in situ-centric’ approach could foster democratic renewal of biocultural diversity.
Frozen Food: Collecting Agricultural Biodiversity at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Agriculture has undergone a comprehensive paradigm shift in the past fifty years, with the advent of modern industrial farming and genetic modification. Plant hybridization is not a new mechanism-Gregor Mendel, the 19 th century Austrian scientist, leveraged the centuries-old practice of selective crossbreeding to discover dominant and recessive traits, laying the groundwork for the modern science of genetics. Since Mendel's experiments with the pea plant, genetics and the biological sciences have produced innumerable innovations in hybridization and modification which have made agricultural crops more efficient and durable. While such practices have allowed agriculture to keep up with the demands of a rising population (though distributed unevenly, of course), their work has also contributed to a loss of genetic diversity in agricultural settings, broadly weakening the abilities of agricultural crops to adapt to changing conditions through the mechanism of natural selection.
Seeds, Law and Identity: Conserving Biodiversity
This paper examines seeds' role in sustaining civilizations and asserts that the basis for food security is seed saving. It follows the history of wheat and peoples, focusing on personal experience growing landrace "Turkey" Hard Red Winter Wheat. The Turkey Red story of 140 years ago has been called a myth. It is part of a developing business model for future seed savers that encourages diverse and locally saved seed supplies. That model is being threatened by patenting seeds today, which limits the availability of seed and the role of seed savers. The paper documents attempts for the development of a biological open source license. The license would work toward preservation of seeds and an indigenous knowledge base for future generations.