I was pretty blown away by a student video on biodiversity that I first saw at Evolving Thoughts, a science blog. It is a really classy little film, one I would have been proud to have made myself, a rapid romp through the entire subject of biodiversity and why it matters. But — you knew there was going to be a but — the entire thing devoted about half a sentence to agricultural biodiversity, and even then it was a throwaway line about food coming “from nature”.
Well, that just won’t do. So Luigi and I had a quick conversation and decided to launch the First Great Agro.agro.biodiver.se Competition: make a better movie (which we will interpret very liberally — animation, Ken Burns-style stills, whatever) and focus on agricultural biodiversity. Perhaps there should be a second category for posters?
We haven’t yet decided on a prize (how about an iPod nano?) or the detailed rules or the closing date or how to enter or how the winner will be decided. But we’re announcing it now so that people have a chance to prepare their entries. Maybe it should run for a year? Help us, please, by sending us your comments on this hare-brained scheme and also making it known to anyone and everyone who might be interested.
The Rules are here. If you don’t like them, tell us why.
Hi there
We would be able to advertise this on our website would that be of interest? We have a highly relevant audience of people interested in botanic gardens and plant conservation
Sarah Dixon
Web Editor
BGCI
http://www.bgci.org
I would like to submit this video to the competition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apWCqcury90
I believe it is great example of agrobiodiversity at work; and why we have genebanks, screening, and (molecular) breeding programs.
The video shows IR64, a widespread rice cultivar, and IR64-sub1, growing side by side on a field at IRRI that experiences a (simulated) flash flood. IR64 is badly affected, IR64-sub1 comes out much better.
These are essentially the same varieties. IR64-sub1 is a so-called “near-isogenic line” of IR64, but with the “sub1” gene. IR64-sub1 was obtained through conventional crossing and back-crossing with IR64; aided by a molecular marker for this gene (to check which of the offspring have the gene and which not). See this (paywalled) paper for the science behind it
The sub1 gene confers tolerance to submergence (roughly speaking, plants can survive 2 weeks, rather than 1 week under water). The gene occurs in some rice landraces, but these are not very popular because of low yield/quality. However, with the gene incorporated into otherwise more attractive cultivars, it can be of great help to farmers whose fields are submerged during the growing season, which is a important problem in rice production in South and Southeast Asia.
I think this is a preview of what many breeding programs will be about. Take a generally high yielding good quality variety and start adding additional characteristics, such as tolerance to floods, drought, salinity, a bug, etc. For a single trait this can be done by crossing and back-crossing, but later by transformation, because the marker assisted back-crossing will become too cumbersome if one wants to keep track of many traits.
Disclaimer: I did not make the video. (but I do want the iPod!)
Here is another video about rice, agrobiodiv, and IRRI. This one was made by CNN. Can it contend for the big price? Or at least be an “outside of competition” entry? What about a “pro” category? Or a price for the best agro-biodiv piece by a broadcaster? Do you have enough resources for that?
You really want that iPod don’t you?