STAFF and students researching disease resistance in plants have new polytunnels in which growing crops can be isolated, thanks to a bequest made to Bangor University.
The bequest to Bangor University was made by Dr John Trevor Williams, who was renowned as one of the “fathers” of the so-called “Doomsday Vault”, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.
This is where millions of seeds are stored for posterity deep beneath the Arctic permafrost.
Dr Williams, the former executive secretary, then director, of the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources in Rome, was also a graduate of Bangor University, achieving a PhD in Agricultural Botany in 1962.
Dr Katherine Steele, senior lecturer in sustainable crop production at the School of Natural Sciences, explained the significance of the poly-tunnels.
She said: “The new build and refurbished tunnels at the Henfaes Research Centre should both last up to 10 years, providing opportunities for more students working on agricultural botany-based projects.
“They are particularly important for testing different cultivars to disease resistance.
“The tunnels reduce the chance of non-planned disease spores entering from the environment and infecting test plants.”
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During his career, Dr Williams made an enormous contribution towards conserving the genes of the world’s food crops.
At the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources in Rome, he led a programme of collecting, conserving and sharing the crop varieties that farmers had grown for centuries – the genetic resources needed for plant breeding and crop improvement.
At the time, farmers were adopting new, higher-yielding seeds and many traditional crop varieties risked becoming extinct.
A way to preserve genetic diversity was to place seeds in a gene bank for long-term conservation.
By the time he stepped down as director, there were more than 1,000 gene banks or collections around the world.
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