Author: Luigi Guarino

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Rice domestication roundup

In the past few weeks there’s been a number of papers on the genetics of rice domestication. I’ll just give you the main findings here, and leave you to battle with the details on your own. With the help of various other bloggers.

Dorian Fuller did a great job of summarizing the multiple domestication (or indica and japonica) theory at The Archaeobotanist a couple of weeks back. This seems to have the upper hand at the moment. Wild perennial rice is cultivated in wetland margins in the Neolithic Yangtze, and as the water ecology begins to be altered by humans, creating seasonal drought conditions to stimulate seed production, particular adaptations are selected (annuality, short stature, less branching etc.), which leads to the domestication of japonica rice. This is then taken to the area of an independently-domesticated proto-indica, probably around 3800-4000 years ago, and some genes are exchanged. So far, so good, and there is now a pretty comprehensive database of rice archaeology to back up the recent studies of single and multiple genes.

Well, certainly the “genetic and selective basis for domestication” seem to be different for japonica and indica, but another recent paper throws some doubt on the multiple domestication idea. Now, I’ve briefly discussed this with people who know a lot more about rice than I do and it seems the main sticking (as it were) point is the dating of the indica-japonica split to 3,900 years ago. Previous estimate were in the hundreds of thousands of years, supporting the multiple domestication theory, but the problem is that the newer, lower estimate was based on domestication genes only. Lots more argument on the horizon, I suspect.

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Ecoagriculture reviewed, again

It was over two years ago that we mentioned a meta-meta analysis of ecoagriculture. Since then we’ve had Prof. Olivier de Schutter, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, weighing in, among other celebrities. Now David Suzuki, no less, tells us about yet another review, with much the same bottom line:

…our review supports the claim that the solutions to the problems of widespread food insecurity and biodiversity loss need not be mutually exclusive, and that it may be possible to address both using appropriate alternative agricultural practices.

Here I just want to throw something else into the mix. We know from yet another recent meta-analysis that there are recognizable socioeconomic patterns to the distribution of infraspecific crop diversity on farm. A study has just been published which suggests that the number of species cultivated by a traditional society can be predicted by latitude, environmental heterogeneity (mainly altitude), and the commitment of the society to agriculture (as opposed to herding, foraging and exchange). Does this mean there are some intrinsic limits to the level of intra- and inter-specific agrobiodiversity a given agricultural system will support? And if so, what does that mean for ecoagriculture in that region?

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Nibbles: Median strips, Vitamin A, Mapping in Kenya, Chaffey, Small farms, Rennell Island coconuts, Sweet potato breeding, Acacia nomenclature, Crop models, Pulque, Fruits

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Making the most of bitter gourd diversity at AVRDC

Another interesting agrobiodiversity piece in AVRDC’s newletter today:

The AVRDC Nutrition group is locked in a struggle with a cucurbit – and so far, warty Momordica charantia appears to be winning! As part of the project “A better bitter gourd: exploiting bitter gourd to increase incomes, manage type 2 diabetes, and promote health in developing countries,” researchers have begun preparing samples of the vegetable for later laboratory analysis.

Interested? “Like” the project’s Facebook page then!