Gene bank preserves biodiversity

by Darrell Noakes
National Public Service Week 2003, supplement in Saskatoon Star-Phoenix newspaper, June 21, 2003
© Saskatchewan Council of Senior Federal Officials

Dr. Axel Diederichsen keeps watch over a national treasure - Canada's crop biodiversity.

As curator of Plant Gene Resources of Canada, a branch of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Saskatoon, Dr. Diederichsen oversees the national seed gene bank.

The gene bank collects, researches, preserves, and distributes plant species.

There are more than 110,000 seed samples in the collection, stored in secure, climate-controlled vaults at the Saskatoon Research Centre. Locations elsewhere in the country store specialized collections.

Dr. Diederichsen is responsible for maintaining the collection and finding new samples. Four researchers and eight technicians work at the gene bank in Saskatoon.

"A gene bank could also be called a collection of genotypes," says Dr. Diederichsen. "What we store and what we distribute is the genotype. In most cases, this is seed."

In other cases, the genotype is preserved as a different part of the plant, such as a tuber (as in potatoes), bulb (as in garlic) or pollen.

"When they hear 'gene bank', some people think this is gene technology. It's not. It's a conservatory, conserving the genotype - the seed - the natural unit which the plant makes for storage."

"The biodiversity of crops is a cultural heritage which would be lost without gene banks," says Dr. Diederichsen.

"You cannot preserve cultivated plants like wild plants just by leaving nature undisturbed," he says.

"Cultivated plants are dependent on humans. They will not preserve by themselves."

"To realise this responsibility of man was what first brought me into this area."

Not long ago, Dr. Diederichsen took part in a collection mission on a small island close to Sicily, a cooperative project involving gene banks in Italy, Germany and Canada.

"It was a turning point in the economy of the island," he says. "Suddenly, from one year to the other, farming stopped."

"The farmers who were left would continue for five or six years, maybe 10 years and then their seeds will be lost."

Dr. Diederichsen recently travelled to Russia to conduct field experiments that allowed researchers to study how flax would grow in three different climates.

Samples were grown in Saskatoon, in Torzok north of Moscow (about the same latitude as Churchill, Manitoba) and in Krasnodar near the Black Sea (latitude equivalent to Ottawa).

Canada's gene bank was first established in Ottawa in 1970. In 1998, it was moved to a modern facility in Saskatoon. Dr. Diederichsen emigrated from Germany to work in the new facility.

"It is a very positive experience for me that the Canadian public invited me here to do this interesting work in Canada," he says. "This tells something about the openness of this country."

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