Women and children run out into the field. They cry and throw themselves under sticks. A month later, they might have reaped the harvest and sold it. For many of them this money was the only way to survive another year in this godforsaken place.
Climate change and PGRFA discussed, and discussed again
Jeremy and/or Andy will no doubt correct me if I’m wrong, because they’re there and I’m not, but I believe it is the very presentation embedded below that was made a matter of only minutes ago by our friend and colleague Andy Jarvis of CIAT at the Special Information Seminar on CLIMATE CHANGE AND GENETIC RESOURCES FOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURE: STATE OF KNOWLEDGE, RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES at FAO. How’s that for timeliness. If not, then Andy will probably give it at the CGRFA-13 side event on pretty much the same subject on Tuesday. Or maybe both? No online sign of the other presentations yet, but I’ll get the scoop on the event from the boys this evening, I expect.
More on those Azeri buffaloes
Thanks to Elli from the Save Foundation for this comment on our recent post on water buffalo in Azerbaijan.
They were crossed with Murrah in Soviet times, just like in the Ukraine and Bulgaria. I’m just preparing a report on Buffalo in SE Europe and we’ve been looking at the situation in Georgia too.
Good to know. Incidentally, I should have mentioned another source of livestock information on the previous post: Gridded Livestock of the World (GLW). If you squint, 1 you can just about make out that it does show some buffaloes in Azerbaijan and other countries in the southern Caucasus.
Nibbles: Breeding, Frankincense and myrrh, Roman pills, Chinese botanic garden, NPGS, Green red bush tea, Old banyan, Terroir, Botanic gardens and invaders, AnGR
- National Organic Coalition suggests USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture separate conventional and participatory breeding from anything involving DNA in considering projects for support.
- Second-guessing the Three Wise Men.
- Yet more on attempts to deconstruct ancient Roman medicines using DNA from tablets found in a shipwreck. Real Indiana Jones stuff.
- Botanic garden and genebank for drought-resistant plants to be established “in Asia’s largest wild fruit forest.” That would be in China. I really don’t know what to make of this. Really need to find out more. But why am I talking to myself?
- Brown (rice) is beautiful.
- Feedback from a genebank user. Kinda.
- Rooibos gets itself certified.
- The oldest cultivated tree on record.
- The taste of Massachusetts.
- “…strongly conservation-minded botanic gardens appear to be in the minority.” Easy, tiger. Will that new one in China (see above) feature in this minority?
- ILRI on an Aussie TV program on conserving local livestock breeds in Africa.
Quinoa phylogenetics unraveled
Our regular reader and occasional contributor Eve Emshwiller informs us that her student Brian Walsh has won the award for best student poster from the Economic Botany Section of the Botanical Society of America at Botany 2011 in St. Louis. Here’s the abstract. There’s some talk of the poster itself perhaps being made available online in due course. Fingers crossed.
Phylogeny of American Chenopodium species with focus on origins of the domesticated taxa.
The edible seeds of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa, Amaranthaceae) have gained popularity worldwide, based on nutritional qualities and ease of growing. Most people do not know quinoa is one of four cultigens of Chenopodium domesticated in the Americas: C. quinoa and C. pallidicaule from South America, C. berlandieri ssp. nuttalliae from Mesoamerica, and the extinct C. berlandieri ssp. jonesianum recovered from archaeological sites throughout eastern North America. Despite nearly 100 years of debate researchers still do not agree on the relationship among these domesticates. Conflicting hypotheses have been proposed asserting whether cultigens were domesticated independently or represent introductions into neighboring regions. Alternative hypotheses suggest two, three, or four independent domestications of Chenopodium in the Americas, and proposed several putative wild progenitors of the cultigens. To investigate the relationships among cultigens of Chenopodium and assess potential wild progenitors, a phylogenetic framework of the genus emphasizing New World species is required. Phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequences of non-coding loci, both nuclear (SOS1 intron 17, COS at103, ITS) and plastid (trnQ-rps16, trnL-trnT, ndhJ-trnF-trnL, psbD-trnT, and psbM-ycf6), were conducted using parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian analyses. Taxon sampling includes 19 Chenopodium species from North and South America, with focus on the extant cultigens and subspecific taxa within C. berlandieri.
Findings include the following: Chenopodium pallidicaule is genetically distinct from other extant cultigens.
Sampled cultivars of the Mesoamerican cultigen, C. berlandieri ssp. nuttalliae, unite in a single subclade, nested within, but distinct from wild C. berlandieri.
Chenopodium quinoa is nested within the C. berlandieri complex, but not within the C. berlandieri ssp. nuttalliae clade. Interestingly, the southern-most range of wild C. berlandieri is southern Mexico, whereas quinoa is cultivated in Eduador, Peru, and Bolivia. These findings are consistent with independent domestications of the extant cultigens. Using nucleotide markers unique to C. berlandieri ssp. nuttalliae, ancient-DNA analyses will be conducted to determine the relationship of the extinct cultigen, C. berlandieri ssp. jonesianum.