- Illinois grape breeders turn to wild relatives. Wait, what?
- “Floods wash away Pakistan’s crop research efforts.” And everything else.
- Passion fruits run riot in Lessos, Kenya.
- CIAT experts aim to ease Colombia’s coconut disease squeeze.
- Botanists agonize over assisted migration.
- Gates Foundation puts stop to debate on smallholder productivity.
Nibbles: Pigeonpea, Livestock breeding, Ecotourism, Data
- Pigeonpea gets the genomics treatment.
- Animal genetic resources for the poor: “…one of the highest priority interventions for the smallholder systems is the development of innovative approaches for the strategic use of appropriate genotypes from the available range of global breed resources.”
- How good is ecotourism?
- Gapminder does per capita food supply.
The diverse uses of genebank collections
It’s easy to assume that it’s only plant breeders that use genebank collections. But in fact there are clever people out there who are delving into genebanks for all kinds of different reasons. Two recent articles on rice illustrate this nicely.
In the latest Rice Today Tom Hargrove tells the story of the global odyssey of the rice varieties called Carolina Gold and White.
Carolina Gold and White show how genes of good crop varieties spread. The seeds made a remarkable journey: from Indonesia to Madagascar by boat almost 2,000 years ago, then to the wealthy and slave-driven Carolina plantations. Her seeds seem to have helped war-weary Confederate veterans start a new life along the Amazon in South America. Freed slaves may have taken her seeds back to Africa, which she once called home. Carolina Gold recently started a new life in South Carolina, and her white-hulled sister is a parent of an improved variety for upland rice farmers in Colombia and Panama.
Hargrove describes how it was by comparing contemporary seeds with genebank samples that part of that epic story was pieced together, and how it was from genebank samples that Carolina Gold cultivation was revived, albeit it on a much smaller scale, in the State which gave it its name, after almost a hundred years.
Meanwhile, EurekAlert has a piece on another famous, though rather more modern, rice variety: IR8. One of the Green Revolution varieties,
IR8 used to produce 9.5 to 10.5 tons per hectare, significantly more than other varieties in the 1960s when average global rice yields were around only 2 tons per hectare. But, when grown today, IR8 can yield only around 7 tons per hectare.
Why? Is it nature or nurture? Researchers “grew rice from original IR8 seeds preserved in the International Rice Genebank and compared it to rice grown from IR8 seeds continuously grown and harvested over the last few decades.” Genetically, they were found to be similar, so the 15% decrease in yield must be down to environmental changes, possibly including hotter nights:
the findings demonstrate the need for ongoing or “maintenance” breeding because it allows rice plants to cope with a changing environment.
So, even when genebank accessions are not used by breeders, the results can end up being of use to breeders.
Nibbles: Musa wild relative, Soil biodiversity, Wild sorghum hybrids, Millet diversity, Bees, Garlic core collection, Heirloom seed saving, Nutrition, Fungal conservation, Sacred places
- New(ish) banana wild relative found in Mekong. Photo by Markku Hakkinen.
- Conserving soil biodiversity.
- Ecological fitness of wild-cultivated sorghum hybrids equal to wild parent.
- Pattern of genetic diversity in pearl millet determined by artificial, not natural, selection.
- The latest on the troubles of bees.
- Garlic gets cored. Totally SFW.
- Seed saving in the Hudson Valley.
- West African leaders say agriculture should be about nutrition. As opposed to?
- International Society for Fungal Conservation established. And that’s about it for now, but there are some ideas about what it will do.
Taro resistant to leaf blight ready to go
Over at Pestnet, plant protection experts are wondering why taro varieties resistant to leaf blight are just sitting around in Pacific genebanks rather than making their way to Cameroon, where the disease has just been spotted.
I find it quite quite extraordinary that we cannot attract donor support to avert a food crisis in Cameroon. The varieties they need are already in PNG and Samoa –- the result of donor funded programmes. Other plant health issues like viruses have also been largely sorted –- again by donor funding. A lot of the material is sitting in tissue culture waiting to go. What is the sticking point to get some over there? What about Alocasia that became a staple in Samoa over the shortage there. That would probably be a quicker and more reliable option than plantain which as we know has enough of its own problems in Africa, including the resident black leaf streak which caused a food crisis in its own right when it arrived there. What is now needed to get it moving.
Is it intellectual property issues? Or just ignorance of the existence of these varieties?