Author: Luigi Guarino

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India clones the buffalo, solves the milk problem

There was a wonderfully informative article on buffalo cloning in Northern Voices Online — tag line: “Connecting Indians Globally” — a few days back. Here’s a few of the interesting tidbits that it serves up (though I haven’t yet verified the information, I should add). A buffalo has been cloned in India for the second time, this one by the name of Garima. The first survived only a few days. India is the world’s largest milk producer (15% of total global production); 55% of that is contributed by buffalo. India’s first cross-bred cow, named Jill, was produced in 1909 at the Imperial Institute of Animal Husbandry Bangalore, by crossing an Ayrshire with the local Haryana breed. And so on.

Now, in such a well-informed and data-laden article, it is surprising not to hear the other side of the story as well. Why not say something about the importance of conserving, continuing to use, and improving local breeds, while all this cross-breeding and cloning is going on? Why not mention the work of the National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources? After all, it will be a long time before cloned elite buffaloes are contributing to that 55%.

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Featured: Genetic erosion

Jacob again, this time on genetic erosion:

Interesting! I have done some digging in this direction. I found that farmers were actually quite conscious about losses, knew the characteristics of the older varieties, but were not regretful about their loss, as these varieties were not resistant to certain diseases…

Read more.

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Attack of the Giant Parsley

David Brenner, a curator at the USDA genebank at Ames, Iowa, has just grown what may be the world’s tallest parsley plant.

Brenner says the seeds for the record-breaking parsley plant were first collected from Hungary in 1983. Even though it resembles a large bushy weed, he says it’s a perfect example of parsley. “It also had big tubers,” Brenner says. “The roots are almost four inches across and in Europe, the roots of parsley are another food crop, almost like a potato, so it has a double-barreled purpose.”

The Guinness people have been summoned. The existing record is six feet and this plant is almost eight.

GRIN knows about six Petroselinum accessions collected in Hungary in 1983, from five different villages, and donated in 1987. However, they’re listed as “inactive.” Not for long, I guess. But with the news making it to the media and Guinness on the way, I hope Dr Brenner manages to regenerate a lot of seed. To find out which one of the six the giant is, we’ll have to wait for the characterization data to go online. Look for that “plant height” descriptor…

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Nibbles: Earthworms, Artisanal fishing, Urban Ag, Bees, Geeks