The recent violence in Syria has raised the alarm for plant breeders worried about the safety of scientists and their work.
Barley breeder Jim Helm has worked with many of those affected, and he has been trying to make contact since the beginning of July. However, sending and receiving messages has been difficult.
At the beginning of July, armed men invaded the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), 30 kilometres outside Aleppo.
Vehicles, farm machinery, equipment and computers were stolen. According to an online message from the centre, databases and other records have been saved along with the gene bank, in which elite lines of crops like barley, chickpeas and other grain are stored.
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Helm, who is head of research at Alberta Agriculture’s Field Crop Development Centre at Lacombe, does not know when the centre might be able to restore operations.
“I can’t see them starting up again. They lost everything,” he said.
A recent online message said most of the harvest was completed and seeds were saved. Most employees were moved to safety.
Helm was able to receive and store a considerable amount of genetic material from that centre.
“A lot of that germplasm, I have. I received somewhere over 2,000 barley lines this year,” he said.
ICARDA is part of an international network of centres that hold germplasm for a number of crops. The material is then exchanged and tested in breeding programs to develop new grain varieties.
The Syrian centre opened on a 2,300 acre site in 1977, and its gene bank had large stores of barley, much of which was the basis for Canadian prairie varieties.
