Category: Breeding

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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?

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Nibbles: ABS, Climate change and crops, Beer proteome, Cattle SNPs, Nepal genebank, Sceletium tortuosum, CBD, Weeds, Vitamin A

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Nibbles: Pavlovsk, Baobab hybridization, Jackfruit, Vavilovia, Cowpea education, Lead, Bees, Banana wilt, Dariy cows, Pavlovsk, Drylands, School gardens, Genetic diversity in botanic gardens

  • The value of Pavlovsk. Jeremy delivers a slap.
  • CIRAD on kinky sex among the baobabs.
  • “I had never heard that there were distinct varieties of the jackfruit, although of course such a thing was reasonable, so I naturally wanted very much to taste one.” Naturally.
  • Wild relative of pea gets a weird hybrid in-ex situ conservation treatment.
  • A Cowpea Story, an illustrative children’s book by Vicky Inniss-Palmer, tells the hopeful story of a cowpea named Catalina and her struggle to overcome illness and disease with the help of scientists. Meanwhile, scientists meet.
  • Urban gardeners, beware lead. And nurture your pollinators.
  • Reading this, anyone would think nobody had ever researched banana Xanthomonas wilt.
  • Improved dairying in Kenya.
  • Vavilov Institute’s comprehensive update on Pavlovsk.
  • ICRISAT to put in place new market-oriented strategy which will use a “systems perspective in setting our priorities to ensure that all important issues along the dryland agriculture value chain are addressed.”
  • Meanwhile, ASARECA asks for ideas on how to intensify one of those dryland systems in the face of climate change.
  • ICIMOD promotes herbal gardens in schools.
  • Botanic gardens get wrists slapped over their inattention to genetics.