Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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Mutation breeding: still a long shot

This is why we love the internets. Because when we say “one to keep an eye on,” what we really mean is, “This seems odd beyond belief”. And fortunately for us, people who really know their stuff are indeed keeping an eye on things. Matthew V Di Leo commented on yesterday’s post, and has given us permission to elevate his comment to a post, which we are doing because it is too long merely to feature.

Calling mutation breeding a “technical revolution,” particularly this implementation of it, appears beyond absurd to me.

I don’t have access (yet) to the full publication that this appears to come from, but from what I can tell they did the following.

  1. Took a rice variety that was already well known to have a set of traits (pale green leaves and semi-dwarfism) that were associated with high yields
  2. Mutated a huge number of individuals of another elite line that does not have these traits
  3. Looked for new mutations that mimic the original trait
  4. Identified the mutations associated with the phenotype with resequencing and created MAS markers to allow them to clear out the extra mutations

A couple points:

  1. They didn’t discover agronomically valuable genes de novo–they simply identified them within a known variety. This could also be done by genetic mapping approaches or simply by crossing the plants through traditional breeding and selecting for the right phenotype. Their approach probably speeds up the process by a year or two at most, and might be much more expensive.
  2. This only worked at all because they had a simple, highly heritable trait that was incredibly easy to measure. This is very rare. Something complex and subtle like yield or salinity resistance 1 would be incredibly hard or impossible to do with their approach.
  3. No matter how you move better genes into your plant, whether by traditional breeding, mutation approaches, or genetic engineering, the total variety development time is rarely much less than 10 years–especially due to the need for multi-year/environment trials.

Thanks again to Matt, who will surely post something more detailed on his own blog.

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Contract farming is good for you — official

en cultivant du riz Many people say that giving smallholder farmers a stronger position in market chains is one of the best methods of helping them out of poverty, and that applies particularly to the neglected, orphaned, underused etc crops that are our bread and butter. Is it true? A new study in World Development says it is. 2 The article is behind a paywall, and even if it weren’t I am pretty confident that I wouldn’t understand the details. So how do I know that “participation in agricultural value chains make[s] smallholders better off”?

Because the author says so.

Which of course he would, although in this case he does so with a blog post explaining just why his study is so much more conclusive than anything that has gone before. And that I could understand. Not the details of how he got there, which is still a long way outside my expertise. But where he got to, which was here:

At the end of the day, I find that contract farming significantly increases the income of participants. Perhaps more importantly, I find that contract farming increases the income net of contract farming revenue of participants. In other words, there are positive spillovers on other sources of income (here, income from from sales of livestock and income from other agricultural sources such as the sales of non-contracted crops and animal byproducts).

More broadly, I’m seeing, and liking, more of these blog posts from scientists about their science. And while not all scientists are capable, not by a long shot, those who can are, I am sure, adding to their reach and impact. Just sayin’

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EU seed law in turmoil?

Good reasons to take the weekend off include the fact that by not being too keen, one avoids certain errors. So I’m glad I didn’t see Patrick’s original post on an opinion delivered by an EU Advocate General in the matter of Association Kokopelli vs Graines Baumaux SAS. 3 At least, not until after he had got things straighter. Here is Patrick’s view of the Advocate General’s views:

First of all the Advocate-General said it is not legal to interpret EU or French Seed Laws as meaning you cannot sell unlisted varieties. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO SELL UNLISTED VARIETIES.

Secondly, the provisions of EU Seed Law that refer to the DUS standard are NOT VALID.

Don’t get your hopes too high for a legal seed supply revolution in Europe. As Patrick explains, there’s a lot more that still needs to happen. But the possibility is that it just might happen, and then Europeans will be in the happy state enjoyed by the entire rest of world, able to buy, sell and grow whatsoever varieties they choose.

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Nibbles: Bananas, No Bananas, Climate change and agriculture, Biodiversity loss, Malnutrition and property, Breeding

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Telling it like it is for rice in Nepal

I’d like to pretend that our absence yesterday was a mark of solidarity with all the netizens protesting against the proposed SOPA/PIPA laws in the US. It wasn’t; we were just both snowed under. But we do think SOPA/PIPA is a mistake.

The latest issue of IRRI’s magnificent organ Rice Today contains an article on Seeds of life in Nepal. All good stuff, about how private companies and the state supply less than 10% of Nepal’s rice seed needs. The rest comes from the informal seed sector. IRRI stigmatizes those seeds as being “low quality”. So, along with the National Rice Research Program, IRRI swung into action, setting up farmer trials of modern varieties, which “within a short time … were identified as superior to local lines”.

They were Radha-32, Ghaiya-2, IR55435-5, Pakhejhinuwa, Radha-4, Ram Dhan, Barkhe-3017, Sunaulo sugandha, Barkhe-2024, and NR-1824-21-1-1.

To get seed to farmers, the project helped set up local seed producer groups, which ramped up production from 4 tonnes to 30 tonnes over three years. Even that, however, was enough for only about 1 in 10 of the farmers in the immediate neighbourhood. More groups followed in other villages, and everyone is now happy.

Except us and some people in Nepal.

The article boasts that “millet and maize that used to replace rice on the table are now feeds for livestock and poultry”. Is that an unalloyed good thing?

Were the local varieties really that bad, and were they conserved? Nepal has a good record of participatory plant breeding (PPB) and community seedbanks and seed producers, set up with local NGOs and other research centres, although one wouldn’t know it from IRRI’s article. Some of the PPB varieties produced in those projects were used by IRRI in the on-farm trials; no mention of those either. Were they rubbish? Or are their names in the list without saying where they came from? LI-BIRD, the NGO most closely associated with PPB and seed producer groups in Nepal, recently published its report for 2009-2010; it contains an article on Community based seed production and another on Community seed banks.