Breeding

September 1, 2011September 1, 2011

UK genebank on BBC Radio 4

Mike Ambrose manages the UK’s largest seed collection based at the John Innes Centre in Norwich.

With a collection of 25,000 seeds from around the world, he tells Caz how looking into the past helps meet the ‘wish-list’ criteria of plant breeders today.

That’s from the Programme Details for this morning’s Farming Today, on BBC Radio 4. I’m sure they have more than 25,000 seeds, but that’s just a quibble. ¹ Did Mike Ambrose really say that the John Innes genebank has seen a 7% year-on-year increase in requests for seed? How much of that went to farmers, I wonder, rather than to breeders.

August 31, 2011August 31, 2011

Wheat researcher honoured by CSSA

Prof. Bikram Gill of Kansas State University is to be awarded the Crop Science Society of America’s Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources. Prof. Gill is Director of the Wheat Genetic and Genomic Resources Center in the Department of Plant Pathology. I’ll let him tell you about his work. Congratulations.

August 29, 2011August 29, 2011

Brainfood: Roots, Ethnopharmacology, Heat tolerance, Food origin myths, Trees outside forests, Wild fruit tree agroforestry, Viruses in genebank, Reintroduction

Breeding crop plants with deep roots: their role in sustainable carbon, nutrient and water sequestration. Good for soil structure, good for C sequestration, good for yields. What’s not to like?
Ethnopharmacology, food production, nutrition and biodiversity conservation: Towards a sustainable future for indigenous peoples. Ethnopharmacologists need to think more generally about nutrition, and a lot more about conservation. And a view on the whole “wonder herb” thing from two botanical garden boffins who protest way too much as far as I’m concerned.
Modelling predicts that heat stress, not drought, will increase vulnerability of wheat in Europe. It’s the heat, not the humidity. But maybe wild relatives can help.
The Virtuous Manioc and the Horny Barbasco: Sublime and Grotesque Modes of Transformation in the Origin of Yanesha Plant Life. Maize is the result of a virgin birth, chili peppers of a fart. I’ll buy that.
Is there a forest transition outside forests? Trajectories of farm trees and effects on ecosystem services in an agricultural landscape in Eastern Germany. Yes, but.
Biodiversity and socioeconomic factors supporting farmers’ choice of wild edible trees in the agroforestry systems of Benin (West Africa). Those factors are: how important the trees are for food and medicine and how accessible they are. Still no cure for cancer. Anyway, here’s what ICRAF thinks should come next: domestication, natch.
Pome fruit viruses at the Canadian Clonal Genebank and molecular characterization of Apple chlorotic leaf spot virus isolates. There’s a lot of them. Well that can’t be good, can it?
A long-term view of rare plant reintroduction. A previous review is way too pessimistic.

August 27, 2011August 27, 2011

Taking tomato improvement to the masses

It’s basically your standard I-found-redemption-in-a-tomato-heirloom story:

Another life somewhere in the pastoral wilds of Co Kilkenny, in a summer long ago, the wife of a Finnish jewellerymaker brought slices of tomato to the lunch table: slices a centimetre thick, a hand’s breadth across, jewel-bright with olive oil and scattered with chopped green basil. This simple revelation of what tomatoes should be, enfolded in mouthfuls of sweetness and scent, set my early hankering for the good life.

But this piece in the Irish Times did teach me something for a change. It taught me there’s something called the EU-Sol project “to improve the quality of the tomatoes and potatoes we eat.” But there’s more to it than that: check out the bits of its website aimed at the general public and schools.

August 27, 2011

Nibbles: Dutch soybeans, American flora and vegetation, Cassava pests, Bangladesh biocrats

Do you have a small parcel of land in the Netherlands that you would not mind being used to test soybean varieties? Non-GMO, mind.
Kew has a couple of new online resources on Neotropical plants.
We need an international early warning system for cassava problems.
“Is there anyone in Bangladesh to look deep into the workings of the biocrats who are bent on advancing the cause of giant companies at the expense of the people’s long-term food security?”