7. Crop diversity: challenge
âą Profoundly
underutilized
âą Searching for needle
in a haystack
âą Big, largely untapped
opportunity
6%
94%
Maize allelic diversity
Sarah Hearne, CIMMYT
8. Game-changers
âą Increasing emphasis on
using natural variation
âą New technologies
Ed Buckler (Cornell): speed of
DNA sequencing has increased
25 million-fold in 20 years
â From home ï office
â From home ï sun
9. Many projects out there
3,000 Rice Genomes Project (IRRI) â â
Seeds of Discovery (CIMMYT) â â â
Digital Seed Bank (GPC) â â â
Crop Wild Relatives Project (Crop Trust) â â â
âŠ
Convergence of ideas &
concepts across crops
and organizations
10. Diversity Seek
Networking of like-minded efforts to
harness crop diversity for food security
White paper: http://www.divseek.org
11. Cross-crop learning & integration
âą Advocate common data standards and legal frameworks to
assemble network of interoperable data sets & repositories
âą Common research approaches for crops with similar biology
âą Cross-cutting tools and platforms & capacity-strengthening
12. DivSeek stakeholders
âą Demand-driven agricultural research
â Broaden the genetic base of breeding programs
â Accelerate genetic gains
âą Discovery-driven fundamental research
â Stimulate discoveries that generate spill-over effects
into crop improvement
âą Genebanks
â From âwarehousesâ to research centers that actively
investigate the genetic potential of their holdings
13. First Partnersâ Assembly
âą 69 organizations from 30 countries signed
expression of interest
âą First Partnersâ Assembly in Jan 2015
âą Charter approved:
â The mission of DivSeek is to cross-link, support and add
value to individual activities that harness the power of
crop diversity for food and nutritional security and societal
and economic benefits, by enabling breeders and
researchers to mobilize genetic variation in order to
accelerate crop improvement.