Cost Effectiveness of Germplasm Collections in the CG System. Section 9

Cost information is useful to monitor the performance of the genebanks. Thus, managers, users, and donors of the genebanks can have an idea of the relative costs of managing plant genetic resources. This information can be used to make users but especially donors aware of the actual costs of conserving and distributing accessions and in this way facilitate fund raising. Managers however do have an idea of genebank operational costs. What is then the added value of using a periodic system to collect costs information for the genebank manager? In this section we present some specific cases where the information collected in the genebanks visited can help in the decision process. It is true that the current amount of information does not allow us to make conclusions across centers, but it does allow for some analysis within the centers....

Refinement and standardization of storage procedures for clonal crops. Global Public Goods Phase 2: Part 1. Project landscape and general status of clonal crop in vitro conservation technologies

Among the collective actions of the World Bank-funded Global Public Goods Phase II Project (GPG2), the following collaborative activity: “Refinement and standardization of storage procedures for clonal crops” was given to the CGIAR’s In Vitro Genebanks, represented by the Clonal Crop Task Force (CCTF) composed of genetic resources research staff from the four centres: Bioversity International, CIAT, CIP and IITA. These hold the in trust collections of Musa, cassava, potato, sweetpotato, yam and Andean root and tuber crops (ARTCs). The overarching aims of this activity were to: (1) review the status of vitro conservation in the context of the GPG2 project with an emphasis on the mandated clonal crops; (2) survey the facilities, storage protocols and practices of CGIAR’s clonal crop genebanks; (3) collate and review this information with a view to developing quality and risk management systems to support the production and validation of multi-crop best practice guidelines. Outputs from this activity are designated as a three part ‘trilogy’: Part I, entitled “Project landscape and general status of clonal crop in vitro conservation technologies” introduces the GPG2 project within the CGIAR landscape and overviews the status of in vitro plant conservation in the wider conservation community of practice. This part describes the role of risk and quality management for the effective maintenance of in vitro genebanks in the context of research and the development and validation of best practices

Refinement and standardization of storage procedures for clonal crops. Global Public Goods Phase 2. Part 3: Multi-crop guidelines for developing in vitro conservation best practices for clonal crops

Among the collective actions of the World Bank-funded Global Public Goods Phase II Project (GPG2), the following collaborative activity: “Refinement and standardization of storage procedures for clonal crops” was given to the CGIAR’s In Vitro Genebanks, represented by the Clonal Crop Task Force (CCTF) composed of genetic resources research staff from the four centres: Bioversity International, CIAT, CIP and IITA. These hold the in trust collections of Musa, cassava, potato, sweetpotato, yam and Andean root and tuber crops (ARTCs). The overarching aims of this activity were to: (1) review the status of vitro conservation in the context of the GPG2 project with an emphasis on the mandated clonal crops; (2) survey the facilities, storage protocols and practices of CGIAR’s clonal crop genebanks; (3) collate and review this information with a view to developing quality and risk management systems to support the production and validation of multi-crop best practice guidelines. Outputs from this activity are designated as a three part ‘trilogy’: Part III, “Multi-crop guidelines for developing in vitro conservation best practices for clonal crops” is a compilation of quality and risk management best practices and guidelines from both plant and other bioresources communities. This collective knowledge provided the foundation for developing the GPG2 multi-crop best practice guidelines. They are compiled in two parts. Section I comprises general operational guidelines for quality and risk management in in vitro plant genebanks. Section II provides generic, multi-crop technical guidelines for the medium-term (slow growth) and long-term (cryopreservation) storage of crop germplasm held in In vitro active genebanks (IVAGs) and In vitro base genebanks (IVBGs) respectively

Refinement and standardization of storage procedures for clonal crops. Global Public Goods Phase 2. Part 2: Status of in vitro conservation technologies for: Andean root and tuber crops, cassava, Musa, potato, sweetpotato and yam

Among the collective actions of the World Bank-funded Global Public Goods Phase II Project (GPG2), the following collaborative activity: “Refinement and standardization of storage procedures for clonal crops” was given to the CGIAR’s In Vitro Genebanks, represented by the Clonal Crop Task Force (CCTF) composed of genetic resources research staff from the four centres: Bioversity International, CIAT, CIP and IITA. These hold the in trust collections of Musa, cassava, potato, sweetpotato, yam and Andean root and tuber crops (ARTCs). The overarching aims of this activity were to: (1) review the status of vitro conservation in the context of the GPG2 project with an emphasis on the mandated clonal crops; (2) survey the facilities, storage protocols and practices of CGIAR’s clonal crop genebanks; (3) collate and review this information with a view to developing quality and risk management systems to support the production and validation of multi-crop best practice guidelines. Outputs from this activity are designated as a three part ‘trilogy’: Part II, “Status of in vitro conservation technologies for Andean root and tuber crops, cassava, Musa, potato, sweetpotato and yam” provides a status update on the mandate clonal crops. As tasked by GPG2, it includes lessons learnt, critical point analyses and the priority research needs of CGIAR’s in vitro genebanks

A gap analysis modelling framework to prioritize collecting for ex situ conservation of crop landraces

Aim: The conservation and effective use of crop genetic diversity are crucial to over-come challenges related to human nutrition and agricultural sustainability. Farmers’ traditional varieties (“landraces”) are major sources of genetic variation. The degree of representation of crop landrace diversity in ex situ conservation is poorly under-stood, partly due to a lack of methods that can negotiate both the anthropogenic and environmental determinants of their geographic distributions. Here, we describe a novel spatial modelling and ex situ conservation gap analysis modelling framework for crop landraces, using common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) as a case study.Location: The Americas.Methods: The modelling framework includes five main steps: (a) determining relevant landrace groups using literature to develop and test classification models; (b) model-ling the potential geographic distributions of these groups using occurrence (landrace presences) combined with environmental and socioeconomic predictor data; (c) cal-culating geographic and environmental gap scores for current genebank collections; (d) mapping ex situ conservation gaps; and (e) compiling expert inputs.Results: Modelled distributions and conservation gaps for the two genepools of com-mon bean (Andean and Mesoamerican) were robustly predicted and align well with expert opinions. Both genepools are relatively well conserved, with Andean ex situ collections representing 78.5% and Mesoamerican 98.2% of their predicted geo-graphic distributions. Modelling revealed additional collection priorities for Andean landraces occur primarily in Chile, Peru, Colombia and, to a lesser extent, Venezuela. Mesoamerican landrace collecting priorities are concentrated in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala.Conclusions: The modelling framework represents an advance in tools that can be deployed to model the geographic distributions of cultivated crop diversity, to as-sess the comprehensiveness of conservation of this diversity ex situ and to highlight geographic areas where further collecting may be conducted to fill gaps in ex situ conservation

Transcriptome Analysis of Female and Male Xiphophorus maculatus Jp 163 A

Background: Xiphophorus models are important for melanoma, sex determination and differentiation, ovoviviparity and evolution. To gain a global view of the molecular mechanism(s) whereby gene expression may influence sexual dimorphism in Xiphophorus and to develop a database for future studies, we performed a large-scale transcriptome study. Methodology/Principal Findings: The 454-FLX massively parallel DNA sequencing platform was employed to obtain 742,771 and 721,543 reads from 2 normalized cDNA libraries generated from whole adult female and male X. maculatus Jp 163 A, respectively. The reads assembled into 45,538 contigs (here, a "contig" is a set of contiguous sequences), of which, 11,918 shared homology to existing protein sequences. These numbers estimate that the contigs may cover 53% of the total number of Xiphophorus transcriptome. Putative translations were obtained for 11,918 cDNA contigs, of which, 3,049 amino acid sequences contain Pfam domains and 11,064 contigs encode secretory proteins. A total of 3,898 contigs were associated with 2,781 InterPro (IPR) entries and 5,411 contigs with 132 KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) pathways. There were 10,446 contigs annotated with 69,778 gene ontology (GO) terms and the three corresponding organizing principles. Fifty-four potential sex differentially expressed genes have been identified from these contigs. Eight and nine of these contigs were confirmed by real-time PCR as female and male predominantly expressed genes respectively. Based on annotation results, 34 contigs were predicted to be differentially expressed in male and female and 17 of them were also confirmed by real-time PCR. Conclusions/Significance: This is the first report of an annotated overview of the transcriptome of X. maculatus and identification of sex differentially expressed genes. These data will be of interest to researchers using the Xiphophorus model. This work also provides an archive for future studies in molecular mechanisms of sexual dimorphism and evolution, and can be used in comparative studies of other fish

Experience Feedback Committee: a management tool to improve patient safety in mental health

BACKGROUND: A management tool, called the Experience Feedback Committee, has been applied for patient safety and successfully used in medical departments. The purpose of this study was to analyse the functioning of an Experience Feedback Committee in a psychiatric department and to explore its contribution to the particular issues of patient safety in mental health. METHODS: We conducted a descriptive study based on all the written documents produced by the Experience Feedback Committee between March 2010 and January 2013. The study was conducted in Grenoble University Hospital in France. We analysed all reported incidents, reports of meetings and event analysis reports. Adverse events were classified according to the Conceptual Framework for the International Classification for Patient Safety. RESULTS: A total of 30 meetings were attended by 22 professionals including seven physicians and 12 paramedical practitioners. We identified 475 incidents reported to the Experience Feedback Committee. Most of them (92 %) had no medical consequence for the patient. Eleven incidents were investigated with an analysis method inspired by civil aviation security systems. Twenty-one corrective actions were set up, including eight responses to the specific problems of a mental health unit, such as training to respond to situations of violence or management of suicide attempts. CONCLUSIONS: The Experience Feedback Committee makes it possible to involve mental healthcare professionals directly in safety management. This tool seems appropriate to manage specific patient safety issues in mental health. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12991-015-0062-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users