Sydsvenska Dagbladet publishes NordGen debate article

September 19, 2018

As the grey weather and fall rain is yet again upon us, sun and beaches might feel distant. But foresters and farmers have not forgotten the extreme weather of this summer. Last year, it wasn't drought but heavy rain that caused problems. According to the Swedish Board of Agriculture, the harvest of high-yield winter wheat decreased with 25% due to farmers not being able to sow their fields as their heavy machines stuck.

These extreme weather events have made it evident that we need to adapt to a new reality. We ought to be grateful and proud that several strategies concerning climate change and sustainable development have been written with the purpose of preparing our society of what's to come. Now, we look forward to our genetic resources being included in the work.  Because we need to develop our crop for them to survive droughts, handle heavy rainfalls and resist pests and pathogens that will be more common in the future

Last year, the Swedish government announced a large investment on plant breeding through the project Grogrund at The Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences. This is a necessary and welcome investment, but we mustn't forget the raw material that makes all plant breeding possible; genetic resources.

Genetic resources are organisms that in some way are useful for us. It may be the crop we grow, the animals we breed or the forest we plant. It may even be the wild relatives of our planted crop, but all genetic resources carry important traits. These traits can be expressed in a tree growing straight and tall or a crop resisting drought or being resistant to pathogens.

Things that are surrounding us are easy to take for granted, and genetic resources are not an exception. We often hear, and rightly so, about mountain gorillas, giant pandas and tigers fighting for their survival. But it's not merely exotic, wild animals which are at risk of being extinct. Today, there are for example only 600 individuals left of our Swedish Mountain Cattle. It is classed as endangered. The Mountain Cattle is smaller than other breeds and demand less fodder. It can survive on grass species that grow in rough terrain and can handle long periods of drought. The Mountain Cattle also produce a "good" protein (kappa kasein B) that makes the milk particularly suitable for cheese production. The cattle don't produce as large quantities of milk as commercial breeds, but their other properties are invaluable in a future with changed prerequisites in the agriculture. If the Mountain Cattle should become extinct, its valuable traits would also disappear. And once they have disappeared they will be gone forever.

The same thing applies to the seeds conserved in the freezers of NordGen. Here, we keep barley from the 19th century, beans brought to the U.S. by Swedish immigrants and peas refined for years by Findus. In many cases these seeds can't be found anywhere else. Each grass, vegetable, cereal, legume and potato in our collections carry not only our common cultural inheritance, but also genetic traits that might prove crucial for our future food production. It might be a forgotten grass with long roots that can survive long periods of drought or a tree resistant to at still unknown pathogen. These are seeds from plants adapted to our long, bright summers and our short growing season. Seeds carrying crucial traits when it comes to new and biotechnological solutions for a changed climate.

It is a matter of conserving our inheritance to guarantee our future survival. But it is also a matter of seeing the endless possibilities that comes with taking care of and developing our genetical resources in a sustainable way. Recently a corn variety was discovered in South America. It had developed nitrogen fixing roots after being cultivated for several years without mineral fertilisers. Could this corn variety be cultivated in a larger scale the need for mineral fertilisers, which is produced from a finite resource and leads to massive emissions, would decrease. In our network Baltic Wheat Nordic and Baltic breeders and researchers collaborate to, through plant breeding, decrease the need for mineral fertilisers and pesticides here as well. This would lead to a cleaner water in the Baltic Sea.

The treasure that genetic resources constitutes, is a treasure we at NordGen have been given the responsibility to manage. It is a great honour but also a responsibility that obligates and is regulated in several different international agreements. Genetic resources are not merely an invaluable natural resource. They have the potential of delivering new, sustainable solutions for a green growth which will benefit the Nordic population, today as well as in the future.

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NordGen (Nordic Genetic Resource Center) is the Nordic countries' common genebank and competence center for genetic resources. In their freezers, 35 000 different kinds of seeds are stored.

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Organised within the Nordic Council of Ministers, NordGen work for a sustainable conservation and utilisation of genetic resources connected to food, agriculture and forestry.

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NordGen is also, in cooperation with the Norwegian state and the organisation Crop Trust, responsible for Svalbard Global Seed Vault - a secure backup-layer for plant genetic resources on gene banks all over the world.