NEWS
In a first for the country , a central repository , Biodiversity Biobanks South Africa ( BBSA ), was launched to conserve and manage biodiversity samples on 1 March 2023 . BBSA is the comingtogether of a diverse group of biobank managers to form a network of institutions dedicated to improving the quality of ( and access to ) live samples from plants , animals , bacteria and fungi in one of the world ' s most megadiverse regions .
The BBSA was established under the Department of Science and Innovation ' s South African Research Infrastructure Roadmap .
The launch of the BBSA is the culmination of a process that started in 2018 , which included community engagements , proposal development and approval , and the signing of an agreement between the South African National Biodiversity Institute ( SANBI ) and the Department of Science and Innovation ( DSI ) at the beginning of 2021 .
The BBSA is funded by the DSI and coordinated and hosted by SANBI .
Launch of Biodiversity Biobanks South Africa
South African National Biodiversity Institute ( SANBI ) and the Department of Science and Innovation
Reprinted from : https :// bit . ly / 43xpNTU
" Increasingly , good science is about collaboration and coordination ," said Imraan Patel , DSI Deputy Director- General : Research and Development Support . " And coordination doesn ' t happen by money alone . While we are proud to have been able to fund this effort to build research infrastructure , the hard work was done by you , the community . Of course , the hard work isn ' t over yet – but I ' m sure the impact of these partnerships will be felt at a local and even global level ."
The need for a central biobank was identified to coordinate the range of biodiversity biobanks scattered throughout the country . These biobanks could be found at universities , research facilities and national parks , and were handling
Figure 1 . Imraan Patel , DSI Deputy Director-General : Research and Development Support
live cultures of bacteria and singlecelled organisms , blood samples from sheep and goats ( and rhinos and leopards ), and seed and germplasm from domesticated and wild plants , among others .
The BBSA ' s project lead , Prof . Michelle Hamer , estimated that biobanks in South Africa were handling over a million samples , collected over up to 200 years .
" But , until recently , everybody was working in isolation . Each biobank had to find their own way of handling their challenges , their own ways of collecting and storing and analysing samples . Not only was this incredibly inefficient , but it also created lots of issues around trust
23 Grassroots Vol 23 No 2 July 2023