Author: Luigi Guarino

Karl Haro von Mogel has a better way to revisit domestication:

I wanted to point out that for shattering, the mutant is likely to be recessive. If you stuck a mutant allele into a normal plant you would likely get a normal plant. So I think what would work better is to make an RNAi construct using the shattering gene as the template, that way it would silence the genes involved and be a dominant trait.

Eve Emshwiller agrees with Nigel:

Thank you, Nigel, for highlighting the critical need to integrate biodiversity and agro-biodiversity conservation and the question of how to do that. It does indeed seem that the McNeely and Mainka publication provides little more than continued lip service (although admittedly that is better than ignoring the issue altogether).

Peter Matthews makes a plea for ‘biocultural diversity’:

Wild species that are related to cultivated crops (and wild plant varieties that are taxonomically placed within cultivated species) do fall into a hole between disciplines, exactly as Nigel states. But not only are they and their habitats and ecological associations neglected, so are the past and present relationships between people and those wild species and varieties.

Matthew Cawood talks integration:

Agreed, focusing on “agrobiodiversity” without considering “biodiversity” is to make the modern mistake of putting these two topics into separate intellectual silos. They are ultimately the same thing.

Read all the comments on IUCN’s “Conservation for a New Era” book and how it dealt with agrobiodiversity.