by Jeremy on September 2, 2010
A major study of agriculture in Haiti after this year’s earthquake has found that much of the emergency seed aid provided after the disaster was not targeted to emergency needs. The report concludes that seed aid, when poorly-designed, could actually harm farmers or depress local markets, therefore hampering recovery from emergencies.
Like the man said, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And where would those who rushed to Haiti’s aid have learned some history? Google? Or just this recent paper.
by Jeremy on September 2, 2010
New Agriculturist has a long report about marker-assisted selection and cowpea breeding. The gist of it is that cowpea is susceptible to Striga, or witchweed, a parasitic plant that can destroy the harvest totally. A resistance gene turned up in “an unimproved variety from Botswana” and is the basis of breeding programmes. Screening the results of crossing programmes conventionally is a nightmare, but a doddle if all you’re looking for is the presence of the resistance gene (or a marker close by). That, however, normally requires a well-equipped biotech lab. A UK charity, the Kirkhouse Trust, has been funding a consortium of cowpea breeders in west Africa with the specific aim of making marker-assisted selection available in the field.
The requirements for MAS boil down to a means of extracting DNA from the plant, and the equipment and reagents to then amplify the critical sequence in order to establish its presence or absence. The Trust’s priority has been to source reagents which do not require constant refrigeration and are not hazardous. DNA extraction has become a matter of squashing a leaf segment onto a specially treated paper, and the amplification reaction is provided in dry form, to which the user needs only to add water, and the DNA in the form of a small disc of paper.
One of the project’s six west African partners, in Burkina Faso, has made excellent progress and is now the focus of efforts and a training centre.
The key to the whole effort is the search for sustainability; the Trust believes that this is much more likely to be achieved by putting the technology directly into the hands of the practitioners, rather than by gifting it from on high. This way, the breeders themselves are more likely to have a stake in proving its worth and to be prepared to generate the internal pressure to incorporate MAS into their own national programmes over the long term.
I wonder, though, how many other valuable genes are hiding in unimproved varieties in Botswana and elsewhere. What about their sustainability?
Footnotes:
by Luigi on September 2, 2010
The African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) focuses on promoting investments and policy support for driving agricultural productivity and income growth for African farmers in an environmentally sustainable way. The Forum, which stems from the African Green Revolution Conference in Oslo, is a private-sector led initiative which will bring together African heads of state, ministers, farmers, private agribusiness firms, financial institutions, NGOs, civil society and scientists, to discuss and develop concrete investment plans for achieving the green revolution in Africa.
It’s going on right now, and it’s getting the full social networking treatment. If you want to share corridor gossip, you know where to find us.
LATER: By the way, AGRA, one of the organizers, has also just started a blog.
by Luigi on September 1, 2010
There’s a very good report from Pavlovsk on Al Jazeera’s youtube channel.
My only objection is to the reference to Pavlovsk as “one of only two botanical repositories on the planet.” And since we’re being all multimedia and social networky, I’ll also mention the photos on the Global Crop Diversity Trust’s Facebook page, which could do with — and are in fact receiving — some user-provided value-added.
by Luigi on August 31, 2010
