Back when I made my living applying an outmoded and discredited paradigm by going around collecting germplasm, I had the great good fortune of visiting the Hardamawt province of what at the time was the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. The region, and in particular the beautiful and historic city of Shibam has recently been hit by devastating floods. I could link to news accounts, but I think the series of photographs Jeremy just sent me does a better job of summing up the situation than any number of newspaper articles.
Agriculture in the Hadramawt relies on spate irrigation:
Flood water from mountain catchments is diverted from river beds (wadi’s) and spread over large areas. Spate systems are very risk-prone. The uncertainty comes both from the unpredictable nature of the floods and the frequent changes to the river beds from which the water is diverted.
So flood damage is to be expected every once in a while, and people by and large know how to cope, though on this occasion the flooding seems to have been particularly bad. One of the ways people cope is by building strong houses. Some houses in Shibam are hundreds of years old, despite being made of mud brick. I remember that while collecting (this was 20 years ago) I asked people why they were still growing their local wheats rather than the new Green Revolution varieties. They said that the new varieties, though giving a higher grain yield, were too short, ((In fact, you could say they give higher yields partly because they are shorter.)) and they needed a lot of straw to make the mud bricks they used to build their homes.
Now, I haven’t been back to Shibam since then, and I don’t know whether the use of shorter wheats has spread. And I don’t know whether even if they have this has affected the quality or quantity of the local bricks. But I wonder.
“Back when I made my living applying an outmoded and discredited paradigm by going around collecting germplasm” -What’s the new paradigm?
Same type of question: Why is “going around collecting germplasm” now “an outmoded and discredited paradigm”? And what replaces it? We need germplasm exploration more than ever. And I would add, in situ study of germplasm dynamics, with farmers, in the field and in wild populations surrounding and away from fields to inform conservation.
Sorry, that was a bit of an in-joke between me and Jeremy that I should have explained. I certainly don’t want to give the impression that I think germplasm collecting in no longer needed. It very much is, more than ever. I just don’t think that the way collecting is often discussed in the media (http://www.seedhunter.com/), and sometimes by us the community, myself included, does that cause any favours. We need a language of collecting that avoids the extractive, militaristic terminology of the past (e.g. missions, targets, hotspots). We need more emphasis on building local capacity for collecting (e.g. among extension workers). And we need recognition of the fact that the history of collecting is both one of farmers exchanging seeds among themselves, as well as of Vavilov et al., and somehow bring those two traditions together.
Wise words. However, it seems to me as if collecting and storing PGR ex-situ in OECD countries is indeed something of an anachronism and that genebanks in this part of the world are rather badly integrated in agricultural R&D in general. At the same time the PGR research and policy community uphold the importance of these activities for the world’s foodsecurity, and for the developing world in particular. It is something of a paradox that we are promoting a scheme for the developing world that seems to have gone out of fashion in mainstream ag-research in the richer countries of the world. Tell me I am wrong.
@ Luigi 1
Why would the Shibam people need long wheat straw for bricks? You may need long straw for fences or roofs, but why would bricks benefit from long straw? I would like to learn more about Shibam brick making…
If it is just about quantities, it still doesn’t make sense to me. You may need lots of straw to make a brick, but I can’t imagine brick making is the only use of wheat straw in Shibam or that not having enough of it would cause housing problems. And would the higher plant densities of modern short-straw varieties of wheat not compensate for the vertical loss?
@ Luigi 2 & Ola
In a new PGR management model, wouldn’t it be important to see how much diversity is present in the working collections of plant breeders and the varieties in the field? For instance, US maize varieties now span most of the global diversity of this crop (more highland germplasm should be incorporated to finish the job, though). I think that such base-broadening is better for diversity than having lots of samples sitting in a genebank, even in the long term. So perhaps genebanks should start to actively monitor the behaviour of plant breeders as part of their job?
Now that is a radical idea.
@ Jacob
I refuse to let your ugly facts spoil my beautiful theory. And as for genebanks monitoring use, are you a communist or something?