The World Banana Seed Bank’s mission at Meise Botanic Garden is to store banana seeds to preserve the genetic diversity of various wild bananas, at both the inter- and intraspecific level. This seed bank is a collaborative initiative of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, KU Leuven (University of Leuven), and Meise Botanic Garden. In contrast to many other crops and their wild relatives, effective collection, conservation, and distribution of banana genetic resources are not well developed yet. As a result, taxon specific recommendations need to be postulated regarding the number of collected seeds, sampling strategies in order obtain a broad genetic diversity from different ecogeographical regions, and also on how to maintain and create back-up collections that are not prone to a genetic depletion caused by intensive inbreeding. An additional difficulty comes with the low and erratic germination of wild banana seeds linked to the ripeness of the fruit/seed during harvest and storage conditions.
To maintain a sufficient number of seeds per species in the active collection, regeneration of the seeds needs to be regularly carried out. Regeneration is the rejuvenation of germplasm by actively growing new plants from a subset of seeds after which a new batch of seeds is harvested representing the original population/species, thereby aiming towards a similar representation of the traits and characteristics as the original taxon.
Regeneration of banana seeds is an expensive, time-consuming and space-demanding task, as bananas are perennials which often flower only 1 to 1.5 years after the initial planting. Ripening of the bunches also takes a few months, and it can thus take up to two years before viable seeds tolerant to drying and subsequent storage at -20°C can be harvested. With a long regeneration time for most wild bananas, there is a potential risk in terms of maintaining the overall genetic integrity of the collections or by losing accessions in the time between planting and seed harvesting.
Within this project Meise BG will contribute to the development of a fully operational seed bank for the storage and safeguarding of wild bananas in order to make wild Musa genetic resources available for various stakeholders such as smallholders, scientists, breeders, and prebreeders.