Category: Biofuels

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Cassava diversity 101

After hanging out with experts for three days here in Cali, this is what I think I know about cassava genetic diversity:

  • There’s a hotspot in Brazil, but Central America is pretty diverse too. Those two places are also where the wild species are most numerous. There is geneflow between wild and cultivated populations.
  • There’s little geographic structure within the New World diversity, except for Guatemalan material being way genetically distinct (and higher in protein to boot). Lots of geneflow, I guess.
  • The African material is less diverse than the American, but not much, and significantly distinct from it. Selection, and isolation.
  • Within Africa, the Nigerian material is somewhat distinct. In general, there is more geographic structure in Africa than in the Americas.
  • Asia received material historically from both Brazil (via Africa) and Mexico (via the Philippines), but there hasn’t been the differentiation there that is seen in Africa. There hasn’t been as much selection of natural hybrids in Asia as in Africa.
  • Weird mutants keep turning up, including “sugary cassava,” “ketchup cassava” (the pinkiness is due to lycopene), and amylose-free clones. 
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It’s our ball and we’re not going to play

It’s a scandal! The Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council have stopped funding research at the University of Minnesota because “the university hurt the farmers’ feelings,” according to the director of the two groups.

How? By discovering that growing biofuel crops on existing farmland may be more damaging to the atmosphere than using fossil fuels. That story has been all over, and we didn’t link to it because it isn’t quite up our main street. But interfering with research in this way affects all of us.

PZ, from whom we picked up this latest twist on the story, sums it up best:

Some people, even prominent, wealthy people, simply don’t understand the fundamental concept of basic research. The goal isn’t to get answers that make you feel good; it isn’t to find ways to rationalize continuing damaging practices; it isn’t even to pat you on the should and salve your delicate feelings. It is to find out the actual answer to a problem, no matter what it may be. Don’t fund research if you’re afraid of the truth.