Gene Banks Pay Big Dividends to Agriculture, the Environment, and Human Welfare 英文参考文献.docVIP

Community Page Gene Banks Pay Big Dividends to Agriculture, the Environment, and Human Welfare R. C. Johnson N early a century after the pioneering American apple tree purveyor Johnny Appleseed traveled from town to town planting nurseries in the Midwestern United States, Frans Nicholas Meijer left his Netherlands home to pursue a similar vocation as an “agricultural explorer” for the US Department of Agriculture. Over the course of his career, Meijer, who changed his name to Frank Meyer after reaching the New World, helped introduce over 2,500 foreign plants from Europe, Russia, and China, including the lemon that would bear his name. Starting with his first expedition for Asian plants in 1905, Meyer would encounter isolation, physical discomfort, disease, robbers, and revolutionaries in his quest to collect useful plants. Although some of Meyer’s collections are still used today, only a few are conserved in their original form. They, along with countless other collections from the early 20th century, disappeared because there was no long- term system for conservation. To rectify this problem, Congress established a system of repositories after World War II to maintain and distribute plant genetic resources. This resource has now grown into the National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS; /nea/ plants/in_focus/pbgg_if_npgs.html) and consists of 26 repositories with approximately half a million individual collections. The NPGS functions to maintain agricultural biodiversity and ensure the preservation of the genetic resources needed for food security and environmental restoration. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060148.g001 Figure 1. Collecting Accessions Walter Kaiser collects taper-tip onion (Allium acuminatum) along the Snake River in Idaho in 2005. Collections were made across a broad area of Western rangeland to strengthen the WRPIS Allium collection and for research to determine taper-tip onion adaptation zones needed for successful revegetation. and maintain germplas