- Kenyan herbal medicines in the spotlight.
- Kenyan indigenous trees in the spotlight. The intersection of those two sets would be interesting to explore.
- And then if you mash it up with this…
- … you might still never predict rural Malawi to explode with interest in paprika.
- And yet, (a small bit of) rural America embraces (a version of) sustainability.
- While Bangladeshi farmers embrace participatory wheat variety selection. No idea what they found; the link there is down.
- Next up, participatory selection for efficient use of phosphorus by rape?
- This week’s super-modern chef sourcing strange stuff from the semi-wild gets it in New Jersey.
- Beetroot diversity. Ignore the recipes; focus on the chart of nutrition; has that research been published?
- As for potatoes, the People’s Plot thrives on Olympic glory.
- Quick now: what links Sicily to Kenya? Both make meals of cucurbit leaves!
- OK clever clogs: what links a neglected legume with destructive energy recovery practices? Fracking guar gum, that’s what! (h/t BPA.)
- Nuts, isn’t it? Anyone up for sequencing some 16th century coconuts?
A roadmap to better mapping
Geographers and cartographers often use 2-3 three different software packages for data analysis: they will probably never settle around one tool, online at that, and create a ‘community’ of users there. Instead, the NGOs interested in such a tool should rather offer geo-info advice and look at light open-source GIS software to distribute: how many development workers in the field have had difficulties with the (basic) tabular conversions associated with GPS data? Many many me thinks.
That’s Cédric Jeanneret-Grosjean on online mapping resources. What he’s saying is that they, er, should not be online. Bold. Very bold. But a model that has in fact been followed, at least for the spatial analysis of biodiversity, agricultural and otherwise. And with some success. Maybe time for the crop distribution modellers to try it?
Let’s remember this is important. We’re not just arguing about how to make prettier maps. Identifying what constraints are going to be most significant, when, where in the world, for each crop, is going to be crucial in setting breeding agendas for the next 20 years and more. Breeders need to be able to explore and interrogate these future suitability maps, and explain what they get out of them to their bosses and the policy-makers above them. It’s important to make them as accessible and easy to use as possible. What we have at the moment is not fit for purpose.
Digging up the early history of an early peanut
I recently learned in a throw-away comment during the Q&A after a talk about the Vavilov Institute (VIR) genebank that until just a few years ago a single accession was the main source of early maturity in peanut, a line called Chico. And that variety supposedly traced back to Russia, not a place I for one usually associate with groundnut cultivation, or indeed breeding. Worth a little digging (pun intended).
Let’s start with Chico’s significance. Our go-to guy for groundnut genetic resources confirmed that it was indeed one of the most important sources of early maturity, together with Gangapuri and JL 24. It was used extensively at ICRISAT and various other breeding program for many years, although a number of other sources have now been identified in the mini-core collection.
Next, where did it come from? It is clear in the registration notification 1 that it was in fact a selection from a line from a Russian breeding programme:
Chico was developed by line selection from PI 268661, an introduction into the United States in 1960 from Rhodesia. It had come originally from Krasnodar, USSR, where it was designated Arachis Line No. 370 from ‘VNIIMK 8459.’
PI 268661 is still available in GRIN. That links to the original entry in the plant introduction book for 1960, which reads like this:
268661. SB52. ‘Apaxuc 370’. From U.S.S.R.
This was part of a large consignment of peanuts from what was then Northern Rhodesia and is now Zambia.
268491 to 269135. ARACHIS HYPOGAEA L. Fabaceae. Peanut.
From Rhodesia. Seeds presented by the Mount Makulu Research Station, Chilanga. Received Oct. 11, 1960.
AB denotes alternate branching bunch variety.
AR denotes alternate branching runner variety.
SB denotes sequential branching bunch variety.
BC denotes from Tozi collection, Sudan.
IN59 denotes a 1959 introduction into Rhodesia.
SR denotes Southern Rhodesia strain collected in 1959.
Mount Makulu, incidentally, is still where the Zambian national genebank is housed.
So somehow or other a peanut variety called Apaxuc 370 from a place called Krasnodar, which was in some way derived from VNIIMK 8459, ended up in Northern Rhodesia and, along with many other peanuts, was in due course sent to USDA in 1960 by staff of Mount Makulu. Where it no doubt hung around for a while, but was eventually evaluated and identified as being interesting. A line was then selected and released in 1973 by the Georgia, Virginia and Oklahoma Agricultural Experimental Stations. And the rest is history.
But can we go any further back in time? I asked our friends at VIR and it seems not, unfortunately. “Krasnodar” is in fact the Research Institute of Oil Crops in Krasnodar (VNIIMK is its Russian acronym).
Their names very often consist of the abbreviation “VNIIMK” plus a breeding number. However, there are no accessions numbered “8459” in the collection. Varietal names include numbers of 4 digits, but they always begin with “1”.
Oh dear. What about that Apaxuc 370? First, “apaxuc” is clearly just a rendering of the Russian for peanut (арахис). From VIR again:
There are no lines numbered 370 in VIR’s collection as well. In our peanut catalogue No. 307 corresponds to the variety Stepnyak bred at VNIIMK and used for oil production purposes. It was registered with the catalogue in 1945. The pods of this variety are quite different from those of var. Chico in size and shape: they are larger and have a deep constriction between seed vessels.
Another dead end. VIR does have Chico in its genebank (catalogue No. 1199), but that came in 1980, from the US, with no further information about its history. Bit of a mystery, though, about how its progenitor got from Krasnodar to southern Africa.
There are no data in our documentation on any germplasm exchange with Rhodesia in the middle of the 20th century. Neither there were any additions to the collection from South African countries whether by collecting missions, seed requests or research visits.
And an even bigger mystery about where that progenitor came from in the first place. Was it something Vavilov himself collected on his South American travels, perhaps. I’d like to think so, but I fear we may never know. Not from the existing passport data, anyway. Maybe someone has done some molecular work, though?
Nibbles: CGIAR, Breeding, Shamba Shape-up, Beach, Plant Cuttings, Cabbage pic, Leaf monitor, European AnGR and PGR, Dutch CWR post-doc, Allium on the Highline, Brazil forest code, Japanese rice in Oz, Indian genebank sell-off, Jersey apple genebank, Hazelnut milk subsitute, SPGRC, Urban veggies roundup, Spicy tales, Agroecological zonation
- Frank Rijsberman aims to build a “strong Consortium.”
- Teaching tools aim to improve capacity in plant breeding. And no, I didn’t mean anything by the juxtaposition, settle down.
- Kenyan reality show aims to enhance rural livelihoods. What, are you trying to be funny? No, I tell you, it’s all a massive coincidence.
- You know what, why don’t we just all go to the beach and relax? Nothing like combining work with pleasure…
- You could read the new Plant Cuttings there.
- Or look at 3D photos of cabbages.
- Or fiddle with the latest geeky plant gadget.
- PDF of the European dictionary of domesticated and utilised animals. From the folks at the European Regional Focal Point for Animal Genetic Resources (ERFP). Which is news to me. Relationship to the equivalent on the crops side unclear.
- Speaking of Europe, someone at the Dutch genebank studying gaps in the conservation of crop wild relatives. Welcome to the club.
- Well this sort of thing is not going to help with any gap analysis, is it? Qualifies as assisted migration though, perhaps, which is kinda cool. And may well be needed.
- I wonder what the Brazilian forest code means for crop wild relatives.
- Traditional Japanese rice variety grown in Queensland to help Fukishima victims. Well, yes, but it’s not exactly charity we’re talking about here. And what’s it going to do to all the wild rice there? Which I’m willing to bet is a gap of some kind.
- Speaking of altruistic gestures, the idea to, er, sell the Indian genebank encounters some, er, opposition.
- No plans to sell anything from this new Jersey apple genebank. Except maybe the cider? I wonder, any hazlenut genebanks out there? No, don’t write in and tell me.
- The genebank of the SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre given a bit of a face-lift on VoA. At least in the trailer, starting at 0:45. Not sure how to get the full thing, but working on it…
- Latvian government plants small veggie patch in meaningless gesture. Paparazzi promptly tread all over it. Not that such things can’t be nice, and indeed useful. Oh, and here comes the history. But maybe they should have taken a slightly different tack.
- “Orange is the colour of curry.” Why spice is nice. And here comes the science on that.
- And speaking of heat, FAO very keen to tell you what zone you’re in. Oh, hell, there go another couple hours down the drain as I try to navigate the thing.
The multifarious history of healthy oats
News of a healthy new oat variety sent me scurrying to the Pedigrees of Oat Lines (POOL) website at Agriculture Canada, but alas BetaGene is not there. However, our source on all things oats tells us of another US cultivar, released some years ago, called HiFi, which is also high in those heart-friendly beta glucans. Our source thinks HiFi was probably involved in developing BetaGene.
HiFi, by the way, includes a whole bunch of wild relatives in its pedigree, including Avena magna, A. longiglumis and A. sterilis. Interestingly, when you check up on that A. magna in GRIN, it turns out that the accession used, which was collected in Khemisset, Morocco in 1964, was originally labelled A. sterilis. It looks as though seeds of a couple of different species were inadvertently placed into a single collecting bag on that far-off summer day in North Africa. The mishap was only recognized when the material was later processed in the USDA genebank, which led to the original sample being divided up. Ah, the perils of crop wild relatives collecting! And ah, the value-adding that genebanks do!
Incidentally, there’s material from at least half a dozen different countries in HiFi’s 2 pedigree. And that, of course, 3 is the standard argument for both genebanks holding diverse collections, and a multilateral system of access to (and sharing of the benefits deriving from the use of) that diversity. Too bad that point is not made in any of the news items about the new variety that have been appearing.
I don’t really understand that. I think “the public” would find it interesting that their porridge, or whatever, includes genetic material from all over the world, and that people have been working very hard for many years to put in place the conditions to allow such sharing to continue. Including an international treaty, no less. Which should really be telling us these stories.
LATER: …as opposed to these.