gene banks pay big dividends to agriculture, the environment, and human welfare基因银行支付的股息大农业,环境,和人类福利.pdfVIP

Community Page Gene Banks Pay Big Dividends to Agriculture, the Environment, and Human Welfare R. C. Johnson early a century after the pioneering American Napple 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 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060148.g001 form. They, along with countless other Figure 1. Collecting Accessions collections from the early 20th century, Walter Kaiser collects taper-tip onion (Allium acuminatum) along the Snake River in Idaho in 2005. disappeared because there was no long- Collections were made across a broad area of Western rangeland to strengthen the WRPIS Allium term system for conservation. To rectify collection and for research to determine taper-tip onion adaptation zones needed for successful revegetation. this problem, Congress established a system of repositories after World and maintain germplasm is ongoing genetic uniformity and dependence on War II to maintain and distribute and urgent. Since agriculture’s just a few cr