Knowledge Centre – NordGen Plants

We live in a time when climate change is affecting our ability to grow our own food. Drought, floods and higher mean temperatures means that developing new plant varieties that can withstand the new challenges are more important than ever. But no plant breeding is possible without the green infrastructure stored in the DNA of seeds. And not even advanced gene technology can replace the natural genetic diversity that we find in our wild, semi-wild and cultivated crops. The most important task of NordGen Plants is to safeguard and facilitate the sustainable use of plant genetic resources that are important for agriculture in the Nordic countries. By doing so, we create conditions for a more environmentally friendly agriculture that can better withstand diseases, climate change and at the same time produce more nutritious food that corresponds to the consumers’ demands.

The research conducted at NordGen Plants is mostly carried out within different projects. Read more about this under the section “Projects". 

NordGen is responsible for the long-term conservation of the Nordic potato collection, which consists of 95 different varieties of potatoes from the Nordic countries, including the Faroe Islands. Potato varieties are not kept in genebanks as seed samples because that would change the genetic characteristics. Therefore, the potato collection is preserved as living plants, clones, in glass tubes. To avoid the plants being infected by virus diseases, the potato collection is handled and stored in vitro, ie in a sterile environment.

The potato collection is placed at NordGen’s head office in Alnarp, Sweden. But just as with any genebank collection, it is important to have a backup. This safety duplicate is now stored at the Finnish Seed Potato Centre Ltd (SPK) in Tyrnävä, outside Oulu. On March 14th 2022, the facilities were inaugurated by the Finnish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Jari Leppä.

NordGen is part of and arranges several different meetings and seminars for the Nordic stakeholders concerning plant genetic resources. After several years of pandemic restrictions, 2022 was again a year filled with many interesting meetings on site where the year's main event was the inauguration of the new house when many partners and stakeholders from the Nordic countries met in Alnarp.

However, during 2022 NordGen continued to experience an increased demand for knowledge on utilization of the plant genetic resources from public and private research programs, that reaches out to NordGen for collaboration within utilization of the genebank collection.

One such example is an extensive collaboration on the Nordic oat collection between NordGen, Oatly, Lantmännen and ScanOats. This project aims to increase knowledge about the oat collection, data that will make the collection easier to use for researchers and plant breeders that are interested to develop new oat varieties. In the project, all partners share the cost and information gained from genotyping (genetic characteristics investigated through DNA analyses). Therefore, 764 accessions (seed samples) of oats were sown in field during 2022. Read more in the chapter Projects.
 

Preserving and distributing genetic resources requires international collaboration, and the foundation for this work is laid out in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), ratified by all the Nordic governments. To NordGen, as part of the global genebank community, international collaboration is crucial. Forums for this work is the Governing Body to the ITPGRFA and the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (CGRFA), The European Cooperative Programme for Plant Genetic Resources (ECPGR) and the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD. 

To ensure the establishment of a new infrastructure for backup storage of the Nordic plant seed collection, NordGen was granted more than 8 million DKK from the Danish Novo Nordisk Foundation. The infrastructure will improve conservation, long-term viability and characterization of plant seeds and can contribute to scientific progress in future crop production as it will allow for an extensive overview and description of plant seeds for the benefit of researchers, educators, and breeders in the Nordic countries and worldwide. 

A project plan has been prepared for repackaging and quality assurance of all samples and work on this is expected to be completed by the end of 2023. The project activities that continued in 2022 will lead to an increased value and a considerable improvement of the Nordic seed collection and its safety.

NordGen Plants is the largest department. It is divided in two, with the genebank maintaining the Nordic seed collection of 33 000 seed samples and the research department working in a close relationship with public institutions, plant breeding companies and other organizations in order to identify green solutions for a more sustainable society.

A central part of NordGen Plants is the seven different Working Groups on plant genetic resources that together with the national programs constitute the very core of NordGen’s network of Nordic experts. They are an important link between the Nordic and the national technical work within a specific species group. The working groups contribute with insights to each Nordic country’s operations with genetic resources and is also important for knowledge exchange and network contacts.