Dan Barber waxes lyrical about foie gras. Not, you might think, the most agrobiodiversity-laden topic in the world. And entirely inappropriate given that a billion people don’t have enough to eat. Hear him out, though, and then decide whether what he says makes sense.
Induced mutations? Nein danke.
We briefly nibbled SciDev.Net’s take on a press release from the International Atomic Energy Authority, advocating “Nuclear Science for Food Security”. It’s an old story; bombard seeds with radioactivity to induce more mutations, from which breeders can select wonderful new varieties. But as a correspondent reminds us:
There’s really nothing inherently wrong with it. Because it’s a totally random, “shotgun†approach to generating new variations, it lacks the benefits of natural selection to sort out not only what’s viable, but also what’s somehow well-adapted to growing in the environment and have other desirable traits.
Radio-induced mutagenesis was a popular technique decades ago, and some improved varieties were produced as a result. But I think that a much more logical approach would be to more fully assess and exploit the vast amount of extant diversity currently languishing unstudied in genebanks and farmers’ field, material that has already passed through the filter of many centuries, if not millennia, of natural and human selection. Radio-induced mutation is really just a shot in the dark. Better to focus more attention on the existing crop diversity that has yet to be exhaustively collected, characterized or evaluated, before resorting to such an aleatory approach.
Do you agree? Is inducing extra mutations — by chemistry, radioactivity, whatever — a good way to generate more diversity for breeders (and farmers?) to select from. Or should we focus on understanding the diversity we already have? It isn’t binary, of course, but I wonder where the balance should be?
Nibbles: Wikiforéts, Super-rape, Gut microbiome, Soybeans, Golf courses, Chestnuts, Rice, Yeast
- Wiki for African forest information. Go, make it multilingual, fill in the gaps, use it.
- Canola (rape) desalinates, gives fuel and enriched fodder. Jeremy comments: “I’m a tad skeptical.”
- Diversity of intestinal flora good for your figure. Or the other way around.
- Edamame bean comes to Britain. Why, one wonders.
- Golf courses good for salamanders. I wonder if anyone’s looked at how many CWRs they support.
- Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
- Rice domestication unpacked.
- More extreme beer. Oh, and the phylogeny of yeast.
Nibbles: Perennial rice, Mutations
- Not seen my copy yet, but the Land Institute is moving into perennial rice.
- More mutations, for faster breeding, now.
More water
More on that drip irrigation thing I Nibbled yesterday. David Zetland, the aquablogger sans pareil, has blogged a bit about this. On the PNAS paper, he had this to say:
Water has to go somewhere, and drip irrigation just controls that flow. Be a good cost-accountant and find out where else it goes. (There are losers and gainers on an individual basis, but society as a whole should just try to maximize overall benefit from water.)
I’m puzzled by “society as a whole”. Is that some overweening society, or just the outcome of individual actions?
An earlier post, in response to an email, revealed that Zetland, like me, had always though that drip would be more “efficient,” but that there are many factors that come into play.
It’s all about cost and benefit. When water is cheaper, it’s not too important to conserve it, but expensive water doesn’t necessarily mean that the “best” irrigation method is the one that uses the least water. (Although drip-irrigated rice uses less water, it also has a lower yield.)
So, it’s complex. Now, there’s a surprise. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were some decision-making tool that could tell the grower which system would provide the most crop per drop, taking into account, of course, the cost per drop?
And in related news, Reuters reports that Iraq plans to revive 2.5 million hectares of agricultural land by “sucking out the salt”. I’m not sure I understand the project fully. It seems to involve “pumping out the groundwater beneath the soil over several years”. Then what? Natural rainfall replenishes the groundwater? We shall see, but it sounds like a huge undertaking with no guarantees of success or even a reasonable return.
OK, so irrigation isn’t really about agrobiodiversity, but one can use agricultural biodiversity to take advantage of what water is available, and that’s a good enough reason to post.