Pacific Islands invest in test tube plants and crops

Samisoni Pareti



 
Inside a timber shed beside a school playground in a Suva suburb, Dr Mary Taylor and her team of plant technologists are paid to play God.
  Donning white coats and working in a sterile environment, the English scientist and 10 other staff of the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees (CePaCT) extract DNAs of selected plants or crops to be preserved and stored for future use.
  Put another way, CePaCT is the gene bank for most of the Pacific’s valuable root or cash crops.
  Customers of CePaCT—the 22 countries and territories that are members of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community—have deposited genetic material of taro, yam, banana, sweet potato, cassava, breadfruit, kava, potato, black pepper, vanilla even sandalwood and pandanus with the centre for storage and for future ‘withdrawal’.
  Since it opened on 16 September 1999 as part of the Land Resources Division of the SPC, CePaCT has amassed 878 accessions or samples of taro alone, making it the only centre of its type in the world that holds the largest gene collections of the crop.
  “There is no international centre that has the mandate for the conservation and utilisation of taro,” said Dr Taylor, who is the manager of CePaCT.
  “There is a centre in Africa responsible for yams and there is one in Peru which is responsible for sweet potato.
  “Similarly, banana has a centre, surprisingly in Belgium—obviously this is a tissue culture genebank like CePaCT.
  “So as the Pacific is a centre of diversity for taro, the region agreed that taro should be a priority for CePaCT.
  Collection internationally recognised: “In addition, an AusAID-funded project—Taro Genetic Resources: Conservation and Utilisation (TaroGen) supported collecting taro in the late nineties and through into 2000, which established the foundation collection of taro.
  “We then managed to acquire taro accessions from South-East Asia as the result of an European Union-funded project, which significantly added to the diversity of the taro collection.
  “Our collection of taro has now been recognised internationally as a key collection and we do receive funding (long-term) from the Global Crop Diversity Trust to support the taro and also the yam collection.
  “CePaCT was in fact the first gene-bank outside of the International Agriculture Research Centre system to receive such long-term funding, which is indeed recognition of the importance of this taro collection.”
  In many ways, circumstances forced the Pacific to build up its genebank of taro.
  In the early 1990s, Samoa was the leading exporter of taro to markets in New Zealand, Australia and the United States.
  But this particular variety was struck by the taro leaf blight and almost overnight, Samoa’s US$2 to US$4 million taro export industry was wiped out.
  Dr Taylor is well versed with the debilitating impact of the taro blight in Samoa, as she was hired from England to build up the country’s taro genebank following that disaster.
  “Taro production was only resumed in Samoa once taro varieties from other countries, namely Palau and the Philippines, were received and cultivated.
  “What this disastrous event highlighted was the danger of relying on one variety of any crop and therefore the importance of diversity for food security.
  “At the same time, crop scientists in the region were also concerned about the losses to field collections (field gene banks) that had occurred in the region.
  “Significant funds had been spent in the late 1980s on root crop collecting and the establishment of field genebanks in various countries. Yet many of these collections had suffered big losses and some were completely lost. There was increasing consensus that the effective conservation of PGR (Plant Genetic Resources) could only be achieved through regional cooperation.”
  In many ways, CePaCT seems to be yet another successful shot at regionalism by islands countries and territories of the Pacific.
  Since it opened its doors 12 years ago, this SPC outfit has built up an impressive collection—some 1590 accessions in total.
  And it not only collects genes of crops, the centre also distributes them. Last year for example, CePaCT circulated over 8000 plants to countries in the Pacific. Last month, banana cultivars that had been nurtured and grown by CePaCT were ready to be shipped to Nauru.
  Kiribati has been trialling this same variety of banana which seems to grow well in atoll soil.
  Tuvalu, according to Dr Taylor, is also interested in the result of these trials.
  “We are using this collection now in response to requests from countries in the Pacific and to a lesser extent in response to requests from outside the Pacific, from similar regions such as the Maldives.
  “It is a dynamic collection so material goes out and at the same time we are adding material such as new lines from the breeding programme in Samoa.
  “These are very exciting as they are crosses between Pacific and Asian taro. Some have a yellow/orange corm colour indicating that the beta-carotene content is good—meaning that they will be more healthier than normal taro.”
  Climate change proof: Trials and research also form part of CePaCT’s role. Through funding from Australia and Europe, Dr Taylor and her team had been heavily involved in researching crops and plants that are ‘climate change proof’.
  In particular, CePaCT is interested in bananas, sweet potato, yam or swamp taro that are tolerant of drought, saltwater or water-logging conditions.
  Under trial at the moment in Fiji, Kiribati and Palau are a sweet potato variety that was offered by the International Potato Centre (CIP) in Peru.
  This variety is said to be drought and saltwater tolerant and was offered by the Latin American country to Indonesia and other countries that were devastated by the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.
  Preliminary results of these trials have been promising, said Dr Taylor.
  Similar work is being done on building a gene collection of breadfruits, which was the decision of the 2008 meeting in Samoa of the region’s heads of agriculture and forestry.
  It is from this meeting that CePaCT gets its instructions; SPC member countries will identify the crops or plants they want preserved and Dr Taylor and her team will take care of the rest.
  “The planting material is either collected by a staff member from CePaCT or sent to us by our national partners.
  “If the material is in a vegetative state, then it has to meet the bio-security requirements of Fiji.
  “Generally from outside of the region, we just receive new crops/varieties as tissue cultures.
  “Material is either hand-carried (this is often the case within the region) or sent by courier.”
  CePaCT also acts on requests it receives through the worldwide plant genetic resources network known as PAPGREN.
  It was through this network, for example, that the gene of the fei bananas from the Federated States of Micronesia were extracted and now stored at the Suva laboratory of the centre. These bananas are popular because of their high nutritional qualities.
  Dr Taylor said countries can request support from CePaCT if there is concern for the survival of specific genetic resources.
  “Kiribati recently made such a request with regards to their swamp taro.
  “Salt intrusion was threatening the survival of some of Kiribati swamp taro varieties—these have now been established in tissue culture in CePaCT for safe-keeping and will be used in an AusAID funded project on salt tolerance.”
  SOPAC, the Secretariat of the Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, is assisting with this particular research.
  How long can a gene of a plant stored at CePaCT last? As long as it takes, said CePaCT’s manager. Each tissue culture—the growing point—of a plant or crop is placed inside a test tube or plastic container that is thinly filled with “an artificial medium,” basically a sugary jelly.
  Dr Taylor said it has to be sugar to support photosynthesis and since sugar naturally attracts fungi and bacteria, the growing environment of the tissue culture has to be sterile.
  A dress code is therefore enforced inside CePaCT’s greenhouse and temperature is maintained and monitored 24/7.
  “The genebank is held in a secure, self-contained building that has a security lock on the door and only Genetic Resources staff have access to the code. This ensures we control who comes into the building.
  “This obviously controls the introduction of any pests and diseases as it is people themselves who unknowingly can transfer bacteria, fungi and pests such as spider mites which can wipe out the genebank collections.
  “The plants are in tubes in the growth rooms so compared to being planted in a field, they are 100% safe from the pests and disease problems that plants would normally encounter in the field.
  “On fire—the existing building, being wooden does present a risk which is one of the main reasons why we are moving to the new concrete building which does have water sprinklers installed in case of any fire.
  “The growth rooms—where the plants are stored—are also fitted with an alarm system which will be triggered should the temperatures in any of the growth room rise above a certain level—this ensures the plants do not suffer any high temperature stress.
  Pool of genetic diversity: “This is in place in case the air conditioners do not switch on automatically with the generator after a power cut.”
  Safety measures also include the duplication of some of CePaCT’s key collections at Samoa’s plant genebank. This arrangement is similar to corporative practices of having mirror sites, in which company data is stored in a standby computer server that operates from a different location.
  Dr Taylor said CePaCT’s entire collection will be shifted to its new home in Narere, some 10 kilometres from its current location in Suva. Centre staff should begin the move from this month.
  “For many years now, we have been very constrained by the lack of space, both for conserving collections, for multiplying plants for distribution and for research.
  “Two of our post-graduate students have had delays in their research because of lack of space. This new building will bring huge benefits to our programme.
  “We will be able to consider students who want to do research in plant genetic resources and tissue culture, and attachments who want experience in this area.
  “Prior to this new building, we could not even consider this, thus greatly reducing our ability to support capacity building in the region and at the same time limiting the research that we do.
  “Last but not least we will have a new building designed specifically for this purpose, which will greatly improve the efficiency of our work and allow us to operate our regional genebank within international standards.”
  This year being the International Year of Biodiversity, Dr Taylor added it would be difficult to ascertain how much the Pacific has lost in plant diversity in the years before CePaCT started.
  She said some islands countries did have their own collections in the late 1980s and 1990s, but most accessions had since been lost.  However no one can accurately measure the loss in diversity.
  “The taro sample collecting exercise conducted during the TaroGen project showed that the diversity was still there—in the farmers’ fields and in some national collections.
  “Similarly now when we collect we do find diversity. Part of the problem in identifying what diversity could have been lost is the availability of accurate information. We do not have baseline data to draw conclusions from.
  “I think what is important is that if we had continued without a regional genebank, we would have lost diversity and importantly the diversity that did exist would not have been accessible.
  “The beauty of regional collections and a regional genebank is that all countries can have access to these collections—the diversity is not just within the borders of one country or one farmer’s field.”
  As is true of any inter-country or inter-regional exchange programme of this type, the question of intellectual property can be tricky.
  For CePaCT, this matter is covered through material transfer agreements or standard material transfer contracts.
  “Until 2009, we distributed plants from the genebank with a Material Transfer Agreement, often known as a MTA.
  “This has to be signed by the recipient of the plant material and only after receiving the signed document will the plants be released from CePaCT.
  “The MTA commits the recipient to some key conditions, namely that he/she will not take out any IPR on the material they receive and that if the situation arises they will make significant commercial benefits from the use of this material—they will negotiate benefit sharing with the provider of that material.
  “In June 2009, the region agreed to place its collections that are held in-trust by CePaCT in the Multilateral System of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).
  “This is basically a global pool of genetic diversity. All those countries that are Contracting Parties to this Treaty also agree to use a SMTA—Standard Material Transfer Agreement—in any exchange of plant material.
  “This SMTA is more stringent than the original MTA and because it is internationally approved and there are good mechanisms in place to deal with any abuse.”