- If you’re interested in the history, traditions and cuisine of Kerala, this is the website for you.
- How about some whizz-bang technology to improve neglected and orphan crops?
- A blogger Tedtalks about participatory plant breeding in Wageningen.
- And get this: There’s big money in quasi-public sector plant breeding.
- “In the Coella and Combeima watersheds (Tolima, Colombia) the narrative of managing the commons is taking … a participatory shape.”
- The Scientist Gardener explores engineered drought-resistant maize and meets with Darwinian approval.
Featured: Accession identity
On that “wild landrace” rice, Mike Jackson echoes a thought we’ve often had:
I wonder if the accession number(s) of Kasalath (presumably from the International Rice Genebank Collection – IRGC?) is cited in the full article. I have often argued with IRRI scientists of the need to cite the actual accession ‘provenance’ of the germplasm used in research and breeding, rather than just referring to this variety or that. There is a myth that a variety with the same name is genetically the same. And from our own evaluation of IR36 accessions (I think that was the variety, or maybe IR64) in the IRGC made in the 1990s there were at least six different types – even though the breeders stated, with confidence, that they knew what was the variety and what was not. I also hope that the actual lines in which this gene was discovered have been pure-lined and a sample entered into the IRGC – under a new accession number, of course!
I looked at the paper, and couldn’t spot anything resembling an accession number, but it is pretty dense.
Nibbles: Consultation, Biofuels, Konjac, Ecosystem services
- CGIAR wants to hear from you. No, really.
- “[B]iofuels are the number one threat to global food security.”
- Zero-calorie noodles untangled. Some edible aroids just aren’t all that edible.
- Natural England reports on the ecosystem services of agricultural land.
Wild about rice landraces
There’s been some interest in a new rice variety that grows better in soils deficient in phosphorus. The BBC touted Wild rice gene gives yield boost and said that
A gene from wild Indian rice plants can significantly raise the yield of common varieties in nutrient-poor soils.
Moments later, however, the report informs readers that
The gene came from a variety called Kasalath, native to nutrient-poor soils of eastern India.
I guess we all have a ways to go in raising media awareness about the subtleties of genetic resources. A wild plant would hardly be a variety that has a name now would it?
IRRI’s press release and the scientists’ paper in Nature are both clear that the gene in question came from a “traditional rice variety”. And the BBC’s report — despite later referring to “wild varieties” — picked that up. But someone, probably some poor put-upon sub, decided they knew better.
What does it matter? Partly for reasons of conservation. That’s of no interest to the BBC, but IRRI proudly “conserves more than 114,000 different types of rice in the International Rice Genebank”. If they are there, does it matter whether they are still in farmers’ fields? At least one person, however, is using the mistaken characterisation to ask an odd (rhetorical?) question:
[T]his research supports claims that wild crop relatives hold an inventory of genes, the value of which is huge. How do we protect more effectively this rich resource?
I’ll leave others to answer that one, if they must.
As for the gene in question, it seems to promote root growth, which is what enables the plant to scavenge more nutrients from poor soils. I may well have more to say on that in a day or two.
Nibbles: Coffee, Seeds for seedlessness, Garden philosophy
- How to make coffee, diagrammed and phylogenized.
- Where do seedless watermelons come from? In a here-and-now sense.
- A long and fascinating read about gardens and war and much besides.