Recent advances in the conservation and utilization of genetic resources: proceedings of the Global maize germplasm workshop

Abstract

Even for the nonspecialist, maize genetic resources is an Inherently Interesting subject. It has an engaging history, shaped by people of unusual Intelligence and foresight; It Is currently being transformed by exciting new developments in several disciplines; and It offers future challenges that will place'heavy demands on the technical and organizational capacities of national and International Institutions. With the overall aim of more clearly Identifying these challenges and helping prepare to meet them, the Global Maize Germplasm Bank Wor1<shop was held at CIMMYT headquarters on 6-12 March 1988 under the Joint sponsorship of Mexico's National Institute of Forestry, Agriculture, and livestock Research (INIFAP) and CIMMYT. With funding from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), these Proceedings were published to provide a record of the presentations and In doing so to reinforce the workshop's essential message: namely that the conservation and utilization of maize genetic resources are global c ncerns calling for international cooperation in the sharing of Ideas, responsibilities, technology, and germplasm. It was at least partly this awareness that gave rise to early achievements in the collection and classification of maize landraces, which are the subject of papers by E. Hernandez Xolocotzl and EJ. Wellhausen. The vast amount of germplasm they and others collected was first deposited In several national collections; Mexico, for example, received all of the original collections made in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, to which it has subsequently made significant additions (see Country Reports). An important subsequent step was the establishment of a modem germplasm storage facility at CIMMYT In the early 1970s. This bank was first organiZed and managed by Mario Gutierrez G., and it contains samples of the materials deposited In the Mexican bank and numerous additional accessions (see Wellhausen, these Proceedings, for a discussion of the contents and history of the Mexican and CIMMYT c llections). The international character of this work has been even more firmly established since the creation of IBPGR, which has organized numerous collection missions jointly with various national Institutes. Reviewing these early and more recent efforts puts us In a better position for planning and setting the priorities of future work. A key point emerging from this review is that, largely as result of previous work, the maize genetic·resources agenda has been considerably altered. From the 1940s to 1960s, the order of priorities was clearly: collection, preservation, evaluation, and utilization. By the 1970s the order had been reversed, with utilization taking first place. This is not to say that no more challenges remain in the tasks that once headed the list. Some national maize collections are still not adequately preserved, and a vigorous debate about approaches to conservation has arisen, In part, from the discovery only a decade ago of a new diploid perennial species of teosinte (a wild relative of aize) and the rediscovery of another species that had been considered extinct. Current experiments with in situ conservation and monitoring of the maize wild relatives promise to be highly Instructive. Nonetheless, it is now widely recognized (and is expressed very forcefully in these Proceedings by M. M. Goodman) that investments in the collection and preservation of maize genetic resources will be increasingly difficult to justify unless more rapid progress can be made in their evaluation and utilization for the development of new cultivars with high and stable yields. The types of initiatives required to achieve this end are spelled out by various contributors to these Proceedings. v One precondition for increased utilization Is a change In the orientation and activities of germplasm banks. They must be enabled to take advantage of new techniques for generating information about bank accessions (such as cytology studies and applications of biochemical gene markers) and to adopt more efficient systems for rganizing and disseminating information. An example of the latter is CIMMYT's new, computerized bank management system and a COROM version of the system's passport data file, which contains basic descriptions Of all bank accessions. A second requirement is much Intensified cooperation between national and international institutes in germplasm evaluation and information eXchange. This is far too large a task for any single country or Institution. The Latin American Maize Project (LAMP), discussed in several of these papers, is an important move in the right direction. But workshop participants expressed hopes for even broader, global collaboration and considered a proposal put forward by IBPGR for an International network of active collections. They also took several other steps aimed at establishing a basis for future cooperation. One was simply to become better acquainted, through the country reports summarized here, with the holdings and operations of the majority of the world's national germplasm banks. A other was to draw up general conclusions and recommendations that should provtde a set of common goals for future Joint action. We hope the information presented here will prove useful to workshop participants and other researchers interested in maize genetic resources, as they take up the many indivtdual initiatives that will be required to fulfill the collective goals outlined in these papers. We are grateful to the workshop participants for sharing their work and insights and to the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) of The Netherlands, IBPGR, Pioneer HI-Bred International, and UNOP for their financial support of the workshop.