Breeding

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. ¹ 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. ² But maybe I’m wrong.

July 26, 2010July 26, 2010

Nibbles: Beer and fungus, Maize breeding, Coconut on the Salalah plain, Zen, Camel, Grazing, Berries

Beer with shrooms. Well, not quite, but one can hope.
No more corn detasseling? Say it ain’t so.
“Oman to Plant 100,000 Coconut Trees in Dhofar.” That’s in the south of the country, a fascinating area. And one asks, as ever: What varieties, and what’s going to happen to the local material?
Be like the bamboo, man.
From DAD-Net, news of a mini-conference on the camel. And an article on same.
The struggle for forest grazing rights in India.
Dump blueberries, eat local berries, Brits told. Pavlovsk still in trouble.

July 25, 2010July 25, 2010

Nibbles: Protected area management, Yam domestication, Ottoman cooking, Measuring rice drought tolerance, Proteomics, Lupinus, Areca, Jethobudho, Nutrition megaprogramme, Soil bacteria

Concentrating management practices on conserving a particular plant species may have bad consequences for other bits of biodiversity. Lessons for crops wild relatives?
Benin’s farmers ennoble wild yams.
A Lebanese lunch is an educational experience. Right.
Paddyomics video. Nothing to do with the Irish. It’s about how IRRI is automating, er, everything about its phenotyping.
Tamarind’s environmental niche is, in fact, er, niches?
Different wheat genomes generate distinct protein profiles.
Phylogenetic relationships of a new Mediterranean lupin.
Betel nut chewing endangers coral. Kinda. Traditional and all that, but an unpleasant habit nonetheless.
Our friend Bhuwon and others tell the story of the participatory improvement and formal release of Jethobudho rice landrace in Nepal.
CGIAR elicits comment on the Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health megaprogramme. Until August 1.
Bacterial diversity boosts maize yields.

July 24, 2010July 24, 2010

Nibbles: Grain ID, Garlic ID, Funding, Pest control, Sorghum, Grains, Cowpeas

How to identify small grains.
Can you identify a garlic?
“You can’t expect a starving person to save a tree.” I s’pose not. But is that any reason to endow a chair in conflict resolution and development?
“A farmer needs to let the garden get wild in order to protect it from the wild.” Course she does.
Sorghum a huge success in Kitui, Kenya.
Field trip to a grower of old grain varieties.
New cowpea varieties selling like hotcakes, FARA told. And the old cowpeas?

July 23, 2010July 23, 2010

Nixing agrobiodiversity?

Richard Jonasse at Food First did a reasonable job a few days ago of rehearsing the old WEMA vs LEISA (let’s call it) dichotomy in agricultural development. He’s done it before, and so have we, ³ and I won’t go on any more about that. But I did want to say something about one of his assertions. In talking about the policies of USAID and the Gates Foundation, Jonasse says:

What these policies do not do is directly end African hunger by strengthening Africa’s farmers where they stand. This point was underscored recently when, after the Gates Foundation donated $270m (with a promise of $1Bn over the next few years) to CGIAR, Gates’ representatives nixed CGIAR’s agricultural biodiversity mega-programme, saying it was “unfocussed.” This logic represents precisely what is wrong with the Gates/USAID approach. Only an “unfocussed” low-tech approach that honors biological and cultural diversity is likely to be successful in Africa.

Well, that may well be, but the SciDevNet piece to which he links to support that “unfocussed” comment by a “Gates’ representative” doesn’t do that at all. What “Prabhu Pingali, deputy director of agricultural policy and statistics at the Gates Foundation, told the Global Conference for Agricultural Research Development (GCARD) (28—31 March)” is that the megapgrogrammes, as then constituted, “[b]ecause they are so fuzzy … are not likely to generate enthusiasm for increased funding.” All the megaprogrammes, note, not just the agricultural biodiversity one. The agrobiodiversity megaprogramme was indeed “nixed,” but I can find no comment by a Gates Foundation rep on it, either for or against. And anyway, everything still seems to be up in the air on these megaprogrammes. You can follow the CGIAR’s change process on their website and blog.