Luigi Guarino

July 25, 2017July 25, 2017

A sustainable way forward for public plant breeding

How can public plant breeding programs reap royalties and research investments while keeping their cultivars in the public domain?

Good question. For some answers, see the proceedings on the 2016 Intellectual Property Rights for Public Plant Breeding Summit, released yesterday by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

Here’s the organizer, Bill Tracy:

For many years now, we have heard how public plant breeding has been on the decline. What was exciting about this meeting is that we heard real world solutions implemented by colleges and technology transfer agencies that not only support current cultivar development but have increased the number of plant breeders, crop varieties released, and royalties generated.

In an era of continuing consolidation on the private side, it’s good to see public sector plant breeding making a stand.

July 24, 2017July 24, 2017

Featured: Yam beans

Marc Deletre clarifies that yam bean paper:

Yep, you’re right, the species’ names should be in the reverse order [in the abstract]. As it is it suggests that P. ahipa is the progenitor, but actually it’s the opposite.

Sometimes, you just have to read the whole paper.

July 24, 2017July 24, 2017

It’s a new bean, old bean!

Congratulations to Daniel Debouck, bean expert and erstwhile manager of the CIAT genebank, for having a new Phaseolus species named after him:

The specific epithet honours Daniel G. Debouck, given his scholarly contributions, and extensive and systematic collections of wild and domesticated Phaseolus throughout the Americas. He was the first to discover this species during a field expedition in Peru (Debouck 1989, 1990). Seeds from one of these collections (G 21245) were sent to UC Davis, where allozyme analyses provided evidence of their uniqueness, not fitting in either the Andean or wild Mesoamerican Phaseolus vulgaris. Based on these results, funding for additional explorations in Ecuador and Colombia, were granted. Further analyses on newly collected materials provided additional evidence from which earlier papers by Debouck et al. (1993) and Kami et al. (1995) evolved.

July 24, 2017July 24, 2017

Dueling congresses

The 28th International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB 2017), or the XIX International Botanical Congress (IBC 2017)? Thanks to Twitter, both. And next month the XXX International Horticultural Congress (IHC 2018), just for good measure.

Oh, and while we’re at it, Happy 50th Birthday to IITA.

July 24, 2017July 17, 2017

Brainfood: Kolli Hills diversity, Fergana diversity, Chinese rice terraces, ICRISAT prebreeding, Spanish CWR collecting, Edible flowers, Diversification, Prices vs volatility

An ethnographic exploration of perceptions of changes in dietary variety in the Kolli Hills, India. Cassava cash cropping has had unforeseen effects on dietary diversity.
Mapping and assessing crop diversity in the irrigated Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan. More crops on the edges.
An Analysis on Crops Choice and Its Driving Factors in Agricultural Heritage Systems—A Case of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces System. Established for “red rice”, but that’s not enough.
Prebreeding Using Wild Species for Genetic Enhancement of Grain Legumes at ICRISAT. It’s not easy, but it’s been worth it.
A Multispecies Collecting Strategy for Crop Wild Relatives Based on Complementary Areas with a High Density of Ecogeographical Gaps. Collecting in Spain in “…top 10 selected complementary areas would allow the capture of 59 of the 88 targeted taxa and 31% of the 683 different taxa-ELC category combinations identified in the ecogeographical gaps.”
Antioxidant power, anthocyanin content and organoleptic performance of edible flowers. Tycoon Blue will be quite the marketing challenge.
Diversifying Food Systems in the Pursuit of Sustainable Food Production and Healthy Diets. And nary an edible flower mentioned.
Cereal price shocks and volatility in sub-Saharan Africa: what really matters for farmers’ welfare? Prices.