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

Over 430,000 seeds of 56 banana crop wild relative taxa are stored in 13 institutions in 10 countries. Despite this, most taxa are inadequately conserved in seed banks and they remain high priority for conservation. We identify major constraints to their conservation and make recommendations for future management, research and collection. AbstractStoring seed collections of crop wild relatives, wild plant taxa genetically related to crops, is an essential component in global food security. Seed banking protects genetic resources from degradation and extinction and provides material for use by breeders. Despite being among the most important crops in the world, banana and plantain crop wild relatives are largely under-represented in genebanks. Nevertheless, banana crop wild relative seed collections are in fact held in different countries, but these have not previously been part of reporting or analysis. To fill this gap, we firstly collated banana seed accession data from 13 institutions in 10 countries. These included 537 accessions containing an estimated 430,000  seeds of 56 species. We reviewed their taxonomic coverage and seed storage conditions including viability estimates. We found that seed accessions have low viability (25% mean) representing problems in seed storage and processing. Secondly, we surveyed 22 institutions involved in banana genetic r esource conservation regarding the key constraints and knowledge gaps that institutions face related to banana seed c...

Source: Food and Energy Security - November 16, 2021 Category: Food Science Authors: Simon Kallow, Arne Mertens, Steven B. Janssens, Filip Vandelook, John Dickie, Rony Swennen, Bart Panis Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research