LatAm's largest gene bank unveiled in Brasília

As it celebrated its 41st anniversary Thursday (Apr. 24), the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) unveiled the largest genetic repository in Latin America, which can store up to 750,000 seed samples. That places Brazil among the three countries with the world's largest gene stocks in the world, behind only the United States and China.

With an area of 2,000 square meters, the new facility has cost around $5.85 million. In addition to vaults to store seed at minus 20° Celsius, it includes laboratories, in vitro storage rooms, liquid nitrogen tanks, and animal and microorganism DNA samples.

The new repository will store plant, animal and microorganism stocks at the Embrapa Genetic Resources & Biotechnology unit in Brasília for the chief purpose of ensuring food security. Moreover, Embrapa's old stock of over 124,000 seeds will relocate to the new facility. A new Alelo information system is also available on http://alelo.cenargen.embrapa.br for easier reference and information sharing (in Portuguese).

Maurício Lopes, CEO, said genetic resources are critical in agricultural development. “The collection, conservation, value-adding development, and use of genetic resources has enabled Brazil's farming to make giant strides in recent years,” he said. Moreover, he pointed out, many of Brazil's primary crops were originally adapted from other parts of the world, including soy (China), sugar cane (India) and maize (Mexico), and Embrapa has been instrumental in fostering this production.

Lopes went on to rate agricultural research among the country's most critical matters, nearly one of national security. “This becomes very clear when we look to the challenges that we will face in the coming years, with anticipated climate changes that will demand a lot of effort improving our crops and livestock,” he said.

Mauro Carneiro, head of the Genetic Resources & Biotechnology unit which hosts the genetic data base, explained that in addition to storage, the unit is also dedicated to preventive improvement, by anticipating the pests that can attack certain crops.

As an example, he referred back to 1995, when primitive maize and peanut seeds were retrieved for the krahô Indigenous people in Tocantins. The tribe had not succeeded in growing commercial hybrid maize, but had run out of the local variety. “They realized they were losing their crops, until a pajé (shaman) reminded them that Embrapa had picked up samples of those original seeds. So we provided them with some of it, and he grew it and brought more samples back,” Carneiro recalled.

Also as part of its 41st anniversary celebrations, Embrapa has launched a new Internet portal (https://www.embrapa.br/home) and a paper called 2014-2034 Vision: The Technological Outlook for Brazilian Agriculture (https://www.embrapa.br/agropensa/document-vision) (in Portuguese).

Translated by Mayra Borges