- Dogs were first domesticated animal. But the love affair is cooling off, at least for some breeds.
- Building capacity for animal genetic resources use, and for conservation and sustainable use under the ITPGRFA. And tree domestication. Is someone keeping track?
- BGI continues to take over DNA world.
- And the Worst Plant Virus Oscar goes to…
- How PNG farmers cope with drought. From what is developing into a really useful blog.
- I wish I had time to read 200 pages on ancient Athenian food. But maybe you do?
- Learn about the USDA potato collection, including lots of wild relatives.
- The tree that thinks it’s a supermarket: Moringa in the limelight again.
Looking for low saturated fat sunflowers
The genes for these low levels of saturated fat came from sunflowers that were collected in Hungary and Egypt.
Of course such statements are to me like a red rag to a bull. So, for those of you out there who’ve also never met an off-hand reference to an interesting-sounding germplasm accession they didn’t want to get to the bottom of, here’s what I found.
I can’t be sure, of course, but I’m willing to bet the Egyptian accession is PI 250542. I got that in seconds simply by googling “helianthus low saturated fat genes hungary egypt”, which returned a Helia paper from 2004 as the very first hit. The authors, Vick, Jan & Miller, have this to say right in the introduction:
To address this consumer preference [for low levels of saturated fatty acid], the USDA-ARS Sunflower Research Unit has recently released genetic stocks with reduced palmitic and stearic acids, the major SFAs of sunflower oil (Miller and Vick, 1999; Vick et al., 2003a). Two genetic stocks, RS1 and RS2, were released in 2001 (Vick et al., 2003a). These stocks were derived from a cultivated sunflower line, PI 250542, collected in Egypt by Paul Knowles in 1958. RS1 has black seeds with gray stripes, while RS2 has light gray seeds that usually bleach to white in the sun. Both have a total SFA content (C16 to C24) of about 75 g kg-1.
And then there’s this a little further on in the materials and methods:
RS1 (PI 616494) and RS2 (PI 616495) were used as sources of reduced palmitic and stearic acids in crosses with HA 382 (PI 578871).
The Hungarian germplasm was a bit more difficult to run to earth. But not much. There are 50 or so Hungarian accessions in GRIN which have lower than average stearic acid content, 7 of which are pretty low, but none are really low. There are about 30 which are lowish for both palmitic and stearic acid. But there’s only one with really really low palmitic acid: PI 291408. Its stearic acid content is only average, but my guess is that this is the material alluded to in the article I quoted at the top.
Maybe some sunflower expert will tell me if I’m wrong?
Nibbles: Indian livestock, Borlaug book, iFOn, Brassica meet, Pat, Agave, Penguins
- More evidence of India’s fascination with little-known indigenous
cattle breeds. - Forbes reviews Borlaug bio.
- FAO Forestry has a nifty new mobile app. No idea why.
- VI International Symposium on Brassicas and XVIII Crucifer Genetics Workshop looking for sponsors. Any ideas?
- Prof Pat Heslop-Harrison is today’s “Face of Plant Cell Biology“.
- Of course it is a daft idea to claim rights over the word “agave”. But will anyone listen?
- Blimey! A penguin is like a lime juice.
Featured: Banana book
We don’t get many comments on Nibbles, but the book Diane Ragone points to is definitely worth noting.
Check out Angela Kepler & Frank Rust’s new book “The World of Bananas in Hawaii: Then and Now”.
Nibbles: Rice breeding, West African agriculture, Asian AnGR, Wheat breeding, Chinese semiotics, Neglected plant at NordGen, Fledermaus, PPB
- Norwich boffins save the world. To get the real story, you need to deconstruct the piece using this.
- “Results indicate that the greatest agriculture-led growth opportunities in West Africa reside in staple crops (cereals and roots and tubers) and livestock production.” Minor crops get the shaft again?
- Project tackles conservation of Asian farm animal diversity. I’ve always wondered whether there might be a role for ecotourism. I’d pay to see weird cocks. And hens.
- Pakistani boffins return home with skills to improve wheat P efficiency. And the resources? We shall see.
- Chinese food and plant semiotics. Can’t wait for LanguageLog to get to grips with this.
- NordGen characterizes a weirdly-named exotic Cinderella crop. Can you guess which?
- And can you guess what the “best kept secret of agricultural success” might be? Clue: nothing to do with those East Anglian boffins of the first item.
- Participatory plant breeding and gender analysis. They’re not giving much away at the source site.