Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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Collecting manual for plant genetic resources updated and online

Collecting plant genetic diversity is one of those great fat handbooks essential for anyone interested in, er, collecting plant genetic diversity. New it’ll set you back USD230. What’s more, the information in that dead-tree edition is truly ancient, much of it dating back to before 1995. But here’s good news. A brand-spanking new (and almost complete) version is available for your online edification, and our very own Luigi Guarino remains one of its editors. Old information has been updated. New information has been included. The whole thing can be downloaded (and printed, if you must). What’s more, “the editors invite your comments”.

What are you waiting for?

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Agro-business flourishes in Mali

“By selling these seeds in small packets at local markets as well as in her shops, these are more accessible and affordable for resource-poor women farmers.”

One picture is worth a thousand words, they say. The one up there is the last in a series of images on The Guardian’s Global Development blog.

Mali’s first woman seed entrepreneur Maïmouna Coulibaly has launched an agribusiness which brings tasty and nutritious seed varieties on to the market. ‘When the seeds are good, so are the yields. But people need to like the taste to buy it at the market. When we do food tastings we find out what works,’ she says

The whole slideshow promotes the new and improved varieties that Maïmouna Coulibaly is selling because they are so much better than local varieties. But how about that product placement? Wonder what that’s worth?

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An opportunity to see plant breeding history

Francis Lupton with the first UK semi-dwarf wheats, from JIC
The John Innes Centre in Norwich, England, is celebrating what would have been the centenary of the Plant Breeding Insitute, established in 1912 at Trumpington outside Cambridge. And they’re doing it with a one-day conference — tomorrow! — that looks jolly interesting.

Even more interesting, frankly, is a living exhibition …

… made up of some of the 130 varieties that, over the last century have driven UK agriculture. ‘Yeoman’ wheat, introduced in 1916, was a landmark variety, showing that high-yielding, good baking-quality wheat could be bred and successfully grown in Britain. ‘Proctor’ barley led to a tripling of UK barley production. ‘Maris Piper’ potatoes were introduced in 1963 to be resistant to nematodes and are still a leading potato variety today. By the time of its privatization almost 9 in 10 of the varieties of cereal crops being grown in the UK had been developed by PBI.

That will surely be a sight to see. I wonder, though, whether the John Innes Centre could be persuaded to have some of the resultant crops analyzed for their nutrient content. Varieties bred at different times, and grown side by side under experimental conditions, are sorely needed to investigate declines in nutrition.

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Where did the purple potato come from?

Purple potato, Potato Park,Cusco/Frederik Van Oudenhoven This post is not really about purple potatoes. It is, rather, a shameless attempt to connect with Adam Mars Jones, a well-known author. In the course of eviscerating Martin Amis, another well-known author, Mars Jones writes the following:

The same sense of lostness clings to social attitudes. When Des finds a girlfriend, Dawn, the only problem is her racist father, Horace. He’s not just a racist but a throwback of a racist: ‘Your brain’s smaller and a different shape. Whilst hers is normal, yours is closer to a primate’s.’ In the allotment of nasty social attitudes this contorted purple tuber must count as a heritage potato, miraculously re-established from a seed bank.

Which is enough to bring us up short. I’m not entirely sure what point Mars Jones is trying to make — contorted purple tubers being just the job under the right (marginal, high-altitude) circumstances — I do wonder what made him think of that particular metaphor, complete with interesting reference to “seed bank”.

So if you know the man himself, or know someone who might, do please ask and relay his answer.