Breeding

July 28, 2010July 28, 2010

Not the world’s first red apple

Of course it is tiresome for you, Dear Reader, to have to wade through me correcting the mainstream media, but when duty calls I am powerless to refuse.

The BBC was all breathless a couple of days ago with news of a new apple variety on sale in England that has red flesh. Oooh. Ah. It’s like a tomato! And a large chunk of the little report was taken up by the breeder explaining that no GM was involved, just 15 years of crosses and selection and 20,000 seedlings rejected in favour of three that made the grade as worthwhile varieties. ((How long before somebody says, “well, it would have been much quicker, cheaper, easier,” to do it by GM or at least marker-assisted selection?))

What really struck me, though, was not the utter imbecility of the reporter, or even what the bloody apple looked like. It was the fact that nobody had seemed to ask whether this was in fact the world’s first red-fleshed apple, as reported by FOXNews and The Daily Mail. ((Yeah, yeah. I know. Fish in a barrel.)) It isn’t that there are some wild red-fleshed apples out there, and this is the first one that’s good to eat. There have even been a fair number of commercial, good to eat, red-fleshed varieties. It’s just that reporters swallow rubbish so uncomplainingly. Google is your friend.

The photo (by Kayirkul Shalpykov, Bioresource, and lifted from the Living on Earth website) is of “Niedzwetzky apples (malus niedzwetzkyana), famous for their red flesh. There are 111 known trees left in the world”. Not sure I believe that either.

July 27, 2010July 27, 2010

Mini cows threaten to oust pocket pigs

We hate to come over all smug, but when the mainstream media pick up on a story almost a year after we first brought it to your attention, it’s hard not to. Such is the case with The Guardian’s recent discovery of the environmental and eating delights of mini cows. Our post more than a year ago featured a discussion on minicows on DAD-Net ((Which is in the news again for us.)) which, among other things, objected to the word “miniature” because it is misleading. The Guardian has the latest on minicow taxonomy:

Micromini cattle are less than 96.5 cm tall (at the shoulder, presumably, ed.) — those shorter than 92 cm are known as “teacup cattle”.

The major outstanding question now is whether teacup cows will prove to be cuter or more adorable than pocket pigs, our number one search term. Personally, I doubt it.

July 27, 2010July 27, 2010

Nibbles: Plant breeding book, Ug99, NGS, Monitoring, Genetic diversity and productivity, Adaptive evolution, Amaranthus, Nabhan, Herbarium databases, Pepper, Shade coffee and conservation, Apples, Pathogen diversity, Phytophthora

Book on history of plant breeding reviewed.
Rust never sleeps.
Ask not what next generation sequencing can do for you.
Long-term datasets in biodiversity research. Nothing about genetic diversity though. Bummer.
And genetic diversity is important, is it? Yep, it increases productivity, at least in Arabidopsis.
No evidence of adaptive evolution in plants. What? Surely some mistake? I’m serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
The latest from Worldwatch on African leafy veggies. Again, some links would have been nice.
And Worldwatch also interviews Gary Nabhan on Vavilov.
You can browse Tropicos specimens in Google Earth.
Using pepper to protect stored rice.
More evidence of the goodness of shade coffee.
The diversity of Bosnian apples.
Mammal plus bird species richness explains 72% of country-to-country variation in the number of human pathogens. Diversity begets diversity. But which way does the causality go?
Phytophthora infestans in Estonia: “…higher proportion of metalaxyl resistant isolates from large conventional farms than from small conventional farms or from organic farms.” Metalaxyl is a fungicide.

July 27, 2010July 26, 2010

Orphan crops to the rescue

Egged on a bit by Wally Falcon, Chris Fedor of Stanford University basically says in a new article that the best way to combat Ug99 is not to grow wheat. Well, not really. Rather, that if more money had been spent in the past on crops that are not wheat (or maize or rice or even potato), wheat wouldn’t have been grown so much in East Africa and we wouldn’t be having this problem now:

Ug99 … occurred because there was not enough research on more agro-climatically appropriate crops. Perhaps the lesson, then, is that agricultural research should spend more time and money developing yield improvements for native, local crops like teff, cassava, sorghum and pigeon pea so that developing countries will have viable alternatives to just wheat, rice and maize.

I’m not so sure about the Ug99 bit, but I’m all for more money for orphan crops. Problem is, it’s hard for a Cinderella to compete with her Big Sisters when you’re looking for the biggest, fastest impact and research funding is perceived as a zero-sum game. Witness the CGIAR megaprogramme saga. Not to say that there’s no hope, though.

July 26, 2010July 26, 2010

Livestock breeding strategies discussed

The discussion of livestock breeding continues apace on DAD-Net, touched off by a comment on a Science paper (picked up by the BBC among others) on African livestock genomics. ((DAD-Net is a very active information forum on animal genetic resources facilitated by FAO, to which we have alluded in the past. I wish we had something as vibrant in plant genetic resources conservation. Although of course on the plant breeding side we do now have the Plant Breeding Forum.)) It’s a very rich exchange, but unfortunately I can’t find a way of linking to contributions online: it seems to be entirely based on email, with no central, public archiving like with Yahoo or Google Groups. Anyway, I just want to pick out one thing. Philippe Leperre, a vet based in Laos, has this to say:

I am one of the very many specialist that advocate for selection/improvement of the local breed rather than mostly useless, haphazard, costly and non sustainable import of bulls and semen from “developed” countries. I think we are a majority in that respect, but what can we do when the local ministries and the donors prefer to buy from big foreign multinationals rather than from the (poor or at least poorer) local producers?

Now, I have two questions about this statement. To livestock breeders I’d like to ask whether they agree that there is a majority among them which advocates selection/improvement of local breeds. And to plant breeders I’d like to ask what percentage of their community would advocate such a strategy. Because it doesn’t seem to me to be anything like a majority. ((Although as luck would have it there’s an example just out.)) But maybe I’m wrong.