Mobilization of plant genetic resources from South and Southeast Asia

The article is devoted to the replenishment of the VIR collection with plant genetic resources from the territories of the Philippines, Burma, Laos and Vietnam as a result of plant explorations, seed requests and germplasm exchange. In total, four collecting missions were sent to this region in the late 1970s and 1980s. Through their efforts, 2668 germplasm samples were collected and delivered to the Institute. The most numerous were the accessions of grain legumes (916), followed by vegetables (835) and groat crops (653). In addition to direct collection, the Institute was constantly engaged in requesting plant germplasm. In the prewar period, from 1925 to 1941, 396 accessions of cereal, groat, grain legume, vegetable, industrial and fruit crops were received from Burma, Vietnam, French Indochina (Laos since 1949) and the Philippines. From 1946 to 2019, 7928 accessions were added, with the largest number shipped from Vietnam (7840). Such a huge number can be explained by the activities of the Soviet breeding stations in Lai Châu Province, Northern Vietnam, and near Ho Chi Minh City, Southern Vietnam, in the 1980s and early 1990s. It should be noted that significantly fewer wild species and crop wild relatives were mobilized from these countries than from India, Indonesia and Ceylon – about 100 spp., or 10,992 accessions. Altogether, collecting teams brought from the South Asian tropical center of crop origin 18,594 germplasm samples, most of which were groat crops (4521). The prewar seed requests yielded 3520 accessions, with 1022 representing tropical woody, ornamental and medicinal plants from botanical gardens. Requests for germplasm from 1946 to the present time resulted in adding 16,687 accessions to the collection, half of which were groat crops (rice, maize and sorghum). A total of 39,161 accessions were received from the region.

Review of congruence between global crop wild relative hotspots and centres of crop origin/diversity

Crop wild relatives (CWR) are important sources of adaptive diversity for plant breeding programmes. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which the centres of crop origin/diversity are congruent with areas of high CWR diversity. We established the predicted potential CWR distributions for 1,425 CWR species related to 167 crops using 334,527 known distribution locations and generated a global CWR hotspot map. This was then compared to the centres of origin/diversity proposed by Vavilov (amended by Hawkes); Zeven and Zhukovsky’s mega gene centres, Harlan’s centres and non-centres of crop domestication; and crop domestication areas identified using current archaeological evidence proposed by Purugganan and Fuller. Greatest congruence between the global CWR hotspots and other concepts was found with the concept proposed by Vavilov and amended by Hawkes, but there remained significant differences between the CWR hotspots and Vavilov’s concept. This paper concludes that all four centre concepts reviewed have some overlap with CWR diversity but that Vavilov’s original concept has the closest geographic coincidence with CWR hotspots. With the benefit of significant additional global datasets to those used by Vavilov, we were able to suggest amendments to his concept, adding further centres based on CWR hotspots in west and east USA, West Africa, South-east Brazil and Australia. As a result of this study more precise targeting of CWR and crop landrace can be implemented in future, aiding global food and nutritional security.

Foreword

Tanzania Veterinary Association, hereby commonly referred to as TVA has been organising scientific conferences on annual basis ever since 1983. The three-day and theme-guided annual scientific conferences often provide unique opportunities for professionals to be updated about scientific or technological advancements; able to share experiences and make useful recommendations to the ministry and stakeholders. Of recent, TVA has recognized the unique importance of One Health (OH) approaches in surveillance and mitigation of public health risks, notably infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance. OH approaches are premised on the fact that between 60-80% of public health risks have sources in animals. Other public health risks emanate from foods of crop origin and poor agricultural husbandry practices. Environmental pollution is also key to human health and broadly ecosystem health. These inter-linkages thereby call for close collaboration between human, animal, plant and environmental health systems in safeguarding the health of mankind and the ecosystem.

Foreword

Tanzania Veterinary Association, hereby commonly referred to as TVA has been organising scientific conferences on annual basis ever since 1983. The three-day and theme-guided annual scientific conferences often provide unique opportunities for professionals to be updated about scientific or technological advancements; able to share experiences and make useful recommendations to the ministry and stakeholders. Of recent, TVA has recognized the unique importance of One Health (OH) approaches in surveillance and mitigation of public health risks, notably infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance. OH approaches are premised on the fact that between 60-80% of public health risks have sources in animals. Other public health risks emanate from foods of crop origin and poor agricultural husbandry practices. Environmental pollution is also key to human health and broadly ecosystem health. These inter-linkages thereby call for close collaboration between human, animal, plant and environmental health systems in safeguarding the health of mankind and the ecosystem.

The Paleobiolinguistics of the Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.)

Paleobiolinguistics is used to determine when and where the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) developed significance for prehistoric groups of Native America. Dates and locations of proto-languages for which common bean terms reconstruct generally accord with crop-origin and dispersal information from plant genetics and archaeobotany. Paleobiolinguistic and other lines of evidence indicate that human interest in the common bean became significant primarily with the widespread development of a village‐farming way of life in the New World rather than earlier when squash and maize and a few other crops became important.