What I read on my summer holidays
Yeah, summer is over and I’m back at work. Maybe you noticed I haven’t contributed much here in the past month or so. Or maybe you didn’t. Jeremy kept up a steady stream of agrobiodiversity nuggets pretty much all through August. But my lack of activity on the blog doesn’t mean I haven’t tried to keep up, as you would know if you followed us on Facebook, Twitter or Scoop.it. Anyway, for those that don’t, and would like to catch up on my summer reading, here is, in nibble form, what caught my eye during the past month or so:
- “The potato is a religious commodity in America.” Explaining the governance crisis in the US using the humble spud.
- Wait a minute though: “The sizzle seems to be gone from America’s long-term relationship with the potato.” Which apparently means it needs an extreme makeover, colour-wise. For which you’ll need a genebank.
- A tree’s leaves can be genetically different from its roots. Does that mean we have to re-think all molecular phylogenies?
- And speaking of a tree’s leaves, these ones are a thousand years old and give you a buzz.
- A toff with a passion for pigs. P.G. Wodehouse had something to say about this, didn’t he?
- Turns out WFP has a podcast. And ICIMOD has an RSS feed.
- A mathematician factchecks Michael Pollan.
- Pear with me please, while I tell you about another USDA fruit collection.
- 15 Africa-changing innovations include orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. As if they weren’t there before. Anyway, they were THE story for a couple of weeks in August.
- 12 food security innovations include increasing crop diversity. With orange-fleshed sweet potatoes?
- How to put that banana genome to some use.
- Getting the most out of your enumerators.
- IUCN’s Conservation Campus. Any ag? And on a similar topic, training materials in anthropology.
- Automating conservation assessment of plants. You’ll need provenance data from herbaria such as this one at CIP, of course. Oh, and speaking of CIP, they need a phylogeneticist.
- A market opportunity for the mother-in-law?
- Measuring the health of the oceans. Hey, but it’s not all bad for fish.
- Ten species which rely on ex situ conservation. And why that number will go up. How to pay for it all, though?
- Book on the recent history of agricultural research reviewed. I wonder if they looked at the private sector. Because it seems there may be a case to answer.
- Another big grant for taxonomic databases. Ah but this is all going to be community-driven.
- Looks like this Australian genebank could have done with a decent database, community-driven or not.
Nibbles: Kerala, Marker-assisted selection, Plant breeding for fun, Plant breeding for money, Benefit-sharing, Drought resistance
- If you’re interested in the history, traditions and cuisine of Kerala, this is the website for you.
- How about some whizz-bang technology to improve neglected and orphan crops?
- A blogger Tedtalks about participatory plant breeding in Wageningen.
- And get this: There’s big money in quasi-public sector plant breeding.
- “In the Coella and Combeima watersheds (Tolima, Colombia) the narrative of managing the commons is taking … a participatory shape.”
- The Scientist Gardener explores engineered drought-resistant maize and meets with Darwinian approval.
Wild about rice landraces
There’s been some interest in a new rice variety that grows better in soils deficient in phosphorus. The BBC touted Wild rice gene gives yield boost and said that
A gene from wild Indian rice plants can significantly raise the yield of common varieties in nutrient-poor soils.
Moments later, however, the report informs readers that
The gene came from a variety called Kasalath, native to nutrient-poor soils of eastern India.
I guess we all have a ways to go in raising media awareness about the subtleties of genetic resources. A wild plant would hardly be a variety that has a name now would it?
IRRI’s press release and the scientists’ paper in Nature are both clear that the gene in question came from a “traditional rice variety”. And the BBC’s report — despite later referring to “wild varieties” — picked that up. But someone, probably some poor put-upon sub, decided they knew better.
What does it matter? Partly for reasons of conservation. That’s of no interest to the BBC, but IRRI proudly “conserves more than 114,000 different types of rice in the International Rice Genebank”. If they are there, does it matter whether they are still in farmers’ fields? At least one person, however, is using the mistaken characterisation to ask an odd (rhetorical?) question:
[T]his research supports claims that wild crop relatives hold an inventory of genes, the value of which is huge. How do we protect more effectively this rich resource?
I’ll leave others to answer that one, if they must.
As for the gene in question, it seems to promote root growth, which is what enables the plant to scavenge more nutrients from poor soils. I may well have more to say on that in a day or two.
Nibbles: Coffee, Seeds for seedlessness, Garden philosophy
- How to make coffee, diagrammed and phylogenized.
- Where do seedless watermelons come from? In a here-and-now sense.
- A long and fascinating read about gardens and war and much besides.