- German donor examines food and security, notes “the fast loss of biodiversity”.
- Food carts are successful oases in at least one food “desert”.
- Yesterday’s Botany Photo of the Day was American cotton.
- Good news, everyone: “Hardcore farmers prefer lowkey rituals.” Obviously the memo didn’t reach the children of the corn.
- Photosynthesis and climate change: it’s complicated.
- Native Americans try to reclaim control of their foodways. And their waists.
- “…every district should have a community-controlled seed centre with a gene bank for traditional seeds.” Of course it should. “The local available seed diversity needs to be protected and conserved at any cost.” Of course it must.
- “Right now, all over the world, projects are underway to store seeds…“
- Dark earths not just in Amazon, Africa too.
- Presentation on IFAD project on cultivating wild aromatic etc. species for money in Morocco.
Food and Security: diverse views agree
The timing on the E. coli outbreak in Europe is perfect: right on the heels of the "periphery" debt crises, you’ve got the same countries (Spain, etc.) squared off against the same "victims" (Germany foots the bailout bill disproportionally and now suffers disproportionally on this tainted food outbreak). Bottom line: you – Mr. Terrorist – have created tons of enmity, economic loss, and discombobulating fear. If I’m al Qaeda, I’m claiming this one on principle.
Thomas Barnett’s take on the ways in which food impacts our future security are disconcerting, interesting, scary, and in a warped way rather entertaining.
And then there’s this, from a commentary on the G8‘s recent meeting in Deauville:
[T]he world is now better able to feed itself. But the same economic stimuli that underpin higher food output also lead to supply problems, a decline in living standards, and massive social strains, especially in urban centers.
This is important to bear in mind, because rising food prices have historically been the trigger for political revolutions. The three revolutions that made the modern world, in France, Russia, and China, all had their immediate origins in food shortages, fear of hunger, and disputes about food pricing.
Luckily I know better than to quote ancient Chinese proverbs.
Will the real PI 198758 please stand up
An über-narrative that pulses at the heart of the “conservation for use” genetic resources body is the one about the accession that saved the planet. Some sample, preferably of an unprepossessing, weedy individual that otherwise wouldn’t merit more than a glance, turns out to have the gene that confers resistance to a disease, or boosts the content of something or other. Breeders, after a long search and an almighty struggle, transfer the gene into suitably modern varieties which are unleashed on a grateful world just in time to avoid certain disaster. It helps if the saviour sample can boast a biographical tidbit, such as saved by a nonagenarian grannie, or identified while the collector cast his eye about during a yak butter tea break in the Hindu Kush.
We’ve got a million of them, from Hessian flies to tomato solids to dwarfing genes to double-low canola to non-bitter cucumbers to [insert your favourite here].
And then there’s the one about nematode resistance in beets, mostly sugar beets, a new one on me. I was recently tasked to find out more about this particular story, with very little to go on beyond the taskmaster’s hazy memory of the standard über-narrative. A little inspired Googling led me to Pre-breeding for nematode resistance in beet, by W. Lange and Th. S.M. De Bock, who helpfully relate that:
Resistant plant materials originated from the annual accession PI 198758 of B. vulgaris subsp_ maritima, which had been collected in Le Pouliguen, Brittany, France.
Paydirt! And the inclusion of a PI number suggests that this came from the USDA’s genebank system, to which I hurried for more information. 1
However, and this is where it gets complicated, a search for PI 198758 at USDA’s GRIN says that it was collected by G. Coons, of the USDA Tobacco and Sugar Crops Research Branch, at Coimbra in Portugal some time between 1946 and 1951. (It is also not currently available, but that’s a separate story). But — more paydirt! — PI 198759, the very next accession, was indeed collected by Coons at Le Pouliguen in France.
Further Googling took me to the Sugarbeet Research Unit at Fort Collins, who were kind enough to answer my questions about which accession — 198758 or 198759 — should star in the narrative.
“In 1987 I received from IRS, Bergen op Zoom, 2 a packet of seed that was labelled Le Pouliguen Group 2, Pi 198758-59. I also tried to figure this number out and have concluded that its meaning is different from PI as used by GRIN. I think it was a code used by IRS meaning 1987 seed lots 58 and 59.”
Well, maybe … but that really does seem like way too much of a coincidence, that a sample harvested in The Netherlands in 1987, and that came from Le Pouliguen, or has an accession from Le Pouliguen in its pedigree, should happen to end up with the same number as one collected at Le Pouliguen between 1946 and 1951. I mean, it’s possible, but …
Something weird has happened along the way, I suspect. Other evidence from the beet breeders at Fort Collins suggests that Le Pouliguen is the correct location, because other accessions that showed partial resistance to nematodes came from the Loire estuary. Did Lange and De Bock make a mistake in their number? Did GRIN record the wrong collection location for PI 198758? Who knows?
And a final question: am I going to let any of this truth-seeking have any impact on my narrative?
No. But it sure was fun, and it isn’t often you get to say that about trips into GBDBH.
EU needs to coordinate to strategize to conserve genetic diversity
Last week we briefly Nibbled the Seeds for a Sustainable Future conference organised by European Greens and held yesterday. Despite the very short notice, an agrobiodiverse mole tunnelled her way into the proceedings and sent back a report.
Claudia Olazabal, Head of Biodiversity, which comes under the Nature Conservation & Biodiversity Unit at DG ENVI, asked “Is agricultural biodiversity part of the equation?” in her presentation on diversity of genetic resources in the context of international commitments and the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy. During which presentation, she referred to Action 10, that “The Commission and Member States will encourage the uptake of agri-environmental measures to support genetic diversity in agriculture and explore the scope for developing a strategy for the conservation of genetic diversity.”
A questioner managed to ask: Hadn’t the Commission been working on just such a strategy since 1994? 3
To which Mrs Olabazal extemporized thusly:
“There are lots of different actors in the Commission who work on agricultural genetic diversity – Directorate General for Environment, Directorate General for Agriculture, Directorate General for Research … we need to coordinate … “
Ah yes. A need to coordinate across Europe’s complex network of interests. It wasn’t like that in 1994, when everything was at least under one roof. But then again, maybe that’s why there still isn’t really a strategy for the conservation of genetic diversity …
Alas, I think you’ve missed your chance to tell the EU what you think of its “Options and analysis of possible scenarios for the review of the European Union legislation on the marketing of seed and plant propagating material”.
Brainfood: Cabbages, Crops in Darfur, Sowing dates, People and biodiversity, Honeybees, Rhizobium, Figs, Urban ag, Wild olives, Ancient textiles, Ducks, Wheat introgression, Food citizenship, Crop models, Trifolium, Variety choice
- Genetic diversity of Brassica oleracea var. capitata gene bank accessions assessed by AFLP. Czech genebank; subgroups reflected place of origin.
- Optimizing the cropping mix in North Darfur State, Sudan. A study of Umkdada district. “…the results of the model were different from the real practices of the farmers.” Oh dear. To improve the fit, schoolboys should work in the fields more. And crops should fetch more. The dismal science indeed.
- Climate-driven simulation of global crop sowing dates. Ok, this model works. You can predict sowing dates under rainfed conditions for various annual crops from climatic conditions. Not entirely sure why you would want to, though.
- Exploring some of the myths of land use change: Can rural to urban migration drive declines in biodiversity? Yes, counter-intuitively, at least in the forests of Mexico’s southwestern highlands. More from Conservation Magazine.
- Pollination services in the UK: How important are honeybees? Quite a bit, but maybe not as much as previously thought. It’s the wild bees, stupid!
- Genetic diversity and symbiotic effectiveness of rhizobia isolated from root nodules of Phaseolus vulgaris L. grown in soils of Iran. It is high, and it varies, respectively.
- Interspecific hybridization of fig (Ficus carica L.) and Ficus erecta Thunb., a source of Ceratocystis canker resistance. It’s a breakthrough!
- Exploring the diversity of urban and peri-urban agricultural systems in Sudano-Sahelian West Africa: An attempt towards a regional typology. There are 6 types. Not 5; not 7. On this one, the journey is more interesting than the destination.
- Variability of wild olives (Olea europaea subsp. europaea var. sylvestris) analyzed by agro-morphological traits and SSR markers. There’s a lot of variabzzzzzzzzzz…
- Hemp in ancient rope and fabric from the Christmas Cave in Israel: Talmudic background and DNA sequence identification. Mainly flax, but some hemp, from both Roman and Chalcolithic periods. But can you smoke it?
- Modelling the distribution of domestic ducks in Monsoon Asia. Low resolution data, plus fancy modelling, can be used to get pretty good high resolution predictions.
- Gene flow between wheat and wild relatives: empirical evidence from Aegilops geniculata, Ae. neglecta and Ae. triuncialis. It happens, a lot.
- Toward food system sustainability through school food system change: Think&EatGreen@School and the making of a community-university research alliance. Food citizenship?
- Simulation of winter wheat yield and its variability in different climates of Europe: A comparison of eight crop growth models. Big differences among models, so best thing to do is to use the mean of all of them.
- The potential of plant viruses to promote genotypic diversity via genotype × environment interactions. The negative effect of White Clover Mosaic Virus (WCMV) infection on performance differs from white clover genotype to genotypes, which means differential selection, which means negative frequency-dependent selection in host populations, which means diversity. Via.
- Amplifying the benefits of agroecology by using the right cultivars. Why should we summarize, when an author has already done so?