The custodians of biodiversity
By Beatrice Rapisarda – CNR
(ndr) Traveling means crossing landscapes, encountering stories, discovering places that preserve identity and memory. But every landscape is also the result of a delicate balance between species, climate, soil, and human activities: a living heritage that we call biodiversity.
Thanks to a partnership agreement with the CNR, the National Research Council, Italy’s main public research institution and a center of scientific excellence at a global level, we have the privilege of publishing the following article from the Almanacco della Scienza, in which Beatrice Rapisarda of the CNR enters a fundamental field: that of biodiversity banks, where seeds, scientific knowledge, and genetic materials are safeguarded and studied to protect the variety of life on our planet. We wish you an enjoyable reading. (fine ndr)
The variety of life on Earth is one of the most extraordinary and, at the same time, fragile heritages we have. Biodiversity banks, as Mario Sprovieri, director of the Institute of Marine Sciences of the CNR, explains, are a concrete response that scientists, governments, and international organizations have devised to preserve it.
Biodiversity banks are structures, physical or virtual, dedicated to the conservation of the genetic heritage of life on Earth. Their purpose is to preserve biological samples of plant, animal, fungal, and microorganism species, so that they can be used in the future for scientific research, reintroduction programs, or agricultural and medicinal applications. The types are diverse and complementary. Some store seeds of wild and cultivated plants under conditions of cold and low humidity, ensuring their viability for decades or centuries; others safeguard plant genetic material in various forms—seeds, pollen, tissues—to preserve the diversity of agricultural crops. There are also facilities that archive genetic sequences and tissue samples of animals and plants, which are valuable for genomic research and biotechnology, and others that maintain living populations of endangered species through assisted reproduction programs and reintroduction into the wild. There are also banks dedicated to fungi, bacteria, and other microorganisms, often invisible but essential both for the functioning of ecosystems and for the pharmaceutical industry.
“According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), more than 40,000 species are currently at risk of extinction. Every species that disappears carries with it a unique evolutionary heritage made up of adaptations, active compounds, and disease resistances that no future technology will be able to recreate from nothing. Biodiversity banks are fundamental to safeguarding this heritage. Even when a species disappears from its natural habitat, its genetic heritage can remain available for future reintroductions, once environmental conditions have improved,” says Mario Sprovieri, director of the Institute of Marine Sciences (Ismar) of the National Research Council.
The value of these structures is particularly evident in agriculture. Many traditional crop varieties, developed over millennia of farmer-led selection, possess characteristics of resistance to drought, diseases, and extreme temperatures that modern commercial varieties often lack. Preserving them means equipping ourselves with the tools to respond to climate change. “The most famous structure in the world in this field is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, inaugurated in 2008 in the Svalbard Islands, Norway, about 1,300 km from the North Pole. Carved into the rock of a mountain and maintained at -18°C, it preserves over 1.3 million seed samples from all over the world, making it the largest reserve of plant genetic diversity ever built,” observes the director of CNR-Ismar. “The facility was designed to withstand earthquakes, nuclear explosions, and rising sea levels. Its most significant use occurred in 2015, when the war in Syria destroyed the Aleppo seed bank: researchers were able to draw on the genetic material previously deposited in Svalbard to resume their work from abroad.”
Italy also plays a leading role. In June 2022, within the framework of the National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC)—one of the five national centers of excellence funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan—the Biodiversity Gateway was established, conceived from the outset as an infrastructure serving the country. “The Biodiversity Gateway has set itself an ambitious goal: to build a dynamic knowledge ecosystem capable of integrating biodiversity data produced by the eight thematic research groups of the NBFC and making it accessible to scientists, policymakers, businesses, and citizens,” Sprovieri specifies. Its digital portal represents the beating heart: a platform that collects, organizes, and makes available information on species, habitats, ecosystems, threats, and possible solutions, interacting with international infrastructures such as GBIF, iNaturalist, and EOSC. Alongside advanced analytical tools, such as the Marine Biodiversity Geoportal and dashboards for monitoring invasive species, there are also outreach contents accessible to everyone: podcasts, video interviews, illustrated books for children, and educational resources for schools.
“As for physical infrastructures, the Biodiversity Gateway is organized into a territorial network with two main hubs in Venice and Palermo and a series of nodes distributed across the national territory: Fano, Rome (Montelibretti and Tevere), Naples, and Lecce. Each site is designed as a multifunctional space for research, education, outreach, and dialogue with the local area, in line with an integrated approach that embraces research, industry, institutions, and civil society,” the expert explains. “The ambition of the Biodiversity Gateway is to become, by 2035, the national reference hub for biodiversity: a single institutional architecture in which scientific research, training, outreach, and technological innovation feed into one another.”
The physical heart of the Venetian Biodiversity Gateway will be the Palazzina Canonica of CNR-Ismar, an extraordinary complex of historic buildings in the heart of the lagoon. “The spaces will host exhibition and interactive areas, an experimental tank fed by lagoon waters to simulate the salt marsh ecosystem, laboratories, and workshop spaces. The works will be completed by 2029, but a first core will be inaugurated on March 28 with an experiential and interactive setup,” continues the director of CNR-Ismar, who concludes: “On April 15 it will then be the turn of the Naples node, dedicated to the geodiversity of the seabed and the marine biodiversity of the Gulf. In Rome, the Montelibretti node will host innovative spaces for research and outdoor education, while the Rome-Tevere node will serve as a hub for urban river biodiversity. Completing the network is the oceanographic vessel Gaia Blu, a floating laboratory for marine environmental education, connected in real time with schools and integrated into the international network of Blue Schools.”
Testi: Beatrice Rapisarda – CNR
Foto: Sandra Jacopucci
Fonte: Mario Sprovieri, Istituto di scienze marine, direttore@ismar.cnr.it
Giornalista detentore dal 2015 del Guinness World Records TV e Ambasciatore Borghi più Belli d’Italia.
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