- Luigi thumps his tub, again: genebanks are important.
- Studiously avoiding turf-war truisms, grass species exhibit diverse drought tolerance.
- “Honor the Gift of Food,” to diversify diet in line with ancient practices.
- “I do not believe any president in the world has been so intimately involved with the problem of food production is his country, or with such paltry results.” You’ll never guess who. Or what his brother is up to.
- “The problem is not so much the drought but our over-reliance on this single crop.” Diversify, young person.
- Cattle genes make for smaller bison.
- Chinese money makes for new ag research station in Mali.
- Give thanks: turkeys domesticated 1000 years earlier than previously thought.
The paper on drought tolerance `diversity’ in grass species has a confused use of `diversity’. It reports – on physiological drought tolerance – that : “most native grasslands are likely to contain a high diversity of drought tolerance”. What do they mean? That grasslands contain a high number of species with drought tolerance; or possibly but unlikely, as they didn’t check, that the tolerant species adopted a wide range of mechanisms of drought tolerance?
What they did do was evaluate very many species for drought tolerance – just as genebank samples are routinely evaluated for characters of interest. After evaluation we then know just which samples out of very many can be used. Bingo, job done, with no implication that interactive diversity in the field has any special merit over evaluation and subsequent rejection of most diversity as not meeting the particular need in the field (better luck next time in selecting for different needs so keep the genebank operating).
`Diversity’ promotion for natural grasslands always ignores extreme environments that characteristically have `rejected’ all but one grass species as a result of natural selection under stress (lots of examples). Under natural stress or farmer or institutional evaluation we are not looking for diversity per se but at the end result of extreme selection – that is, fitness for a purpose. Under `soft’ environmental conditions this could include many species but under climate change scenarios things are probably going to get worse and a lower number of species tolerant to extremes will fit the job.
Dear Dr. Luigi
Thanks for your topic about genebanks are important , agree with this words “The roads to industrial and organic agriculture both start in the genebank, with crop diversity. Maybe instead of fighting the other side, we could all use our rhetorical skills to secure support for what we all need?”
I think it more fast what is need facing the challange disastrous in the environment and we can repaire any disaster , start use crops in the gene bank..
sanaa