Author: Luigi Guarino

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Stover quality

A couple of papers today on stover quality, and how to get it. Stover is just the dried stalks and leaves of a crop, left in the field after the grain has been harvested. In many places around the world, it is almost as important as the grain itself, because it is used as animal forage or fodder. Sheep and goats and other animals are often allowed to roam around the harvested fields and eat their fill of the dried remains of the crop as well as any weeds and other volunteer plants they may find.

How to get the best quality stover, in terms of its digestibility and nutrient compositions? Well, as in so many things, genetics and management, according to work by three CG Centres. A paper on pearl millet in India by ICRISAT and ILRI researchers points to the importance of genetics: landraces had better quality stover than hybrids, though it came at the expense of yield. On the other hand, a paper from ICARDA in Syria found that rotations involving growing legumes such as medics or vetch in alternate years improved the protein content of both the grain and stubble of durum wheat. Now, I wonder, is there an interaction between the two? Do some varieties respond better than others to management in terms of their nutritional quality?

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Crop national parks?

A new publication by WWF and some friends at the University of Birmingham ((Food Stores: Using Protected Areas to Secure Crop Genetic Diversity. A research report by WWF, Equilibrium and the University of Birmingham, UK. Written by Sue Stolton, Nigel Maxted, Brian Ford-Lloyd, Shelagh Kell, and Nigel Dudley. Published August 2006, WWF – World Wide Fund for Nature)) makes the case for using protected areas, in particular in the centres of origin, to conserve genetic diversity in crops and their wild relatives:

Many of these centres have only five per cent protection, some have only one per cent or less. They include: the Central Andean wet puna of Peru and Bolivia, well known as reservoirs of grains and root crops including the potato; the Eastern Anatolian deciduous forests and steppe of Iran, Turkey and Armenia, centres of diversity for many grains and fruit species; the Southern Korea evergreen forests important for their genetic resources of tea; and the Malaysian rainforests which are centres of diversity for many tropical fruit species, particularly mangoes.