Category: Breeding

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Bees? We don’t need no stinkin’ bees

It’s obvious really. If you have a problem in a billion-dollar industry — almonds — because your workforce — bees — are dying like flies, what do you do? Forget the bees. Breed almonds that don’t need pollinators!

Which is exactly what breeders at the USDA are doing. Actually, self-pollinating almonds are apparently nothing new. There’s a Spanish variety, Tuono, ((Don’t Google it unless you’re a motorcycle freak.)) that “has been around for centuries”. But it doesn’t suit the almond industry of California. Even before Colony Collapse Disorder became a problem the USDA geneticists were busy using Tuono as the pollen parent in a series of crosses, because in addition to dispensing with bees it has other good properties. And now eight new, self-pollinating varieties have been evaluated. In time, they may replace the standard, bee-demanding variety Nonpareil, which apparently accounts for 37% of California’s almond trees. ((Down from 45%, according to an undated FAO document.))

Oh, and if you’re really into almonds, you probably already know about The Almond Doctor.

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Costs, benefits, and the search for disease resistance

An epidemic of Fusarium head blight swept through the United states between 1998 and 2000, costing the wheat industry an estimated US$ 2.7 billion. That’s right: billion.

Salvation came from Chinese and Japanese landraces, especially a Chinese wheat called Sumai 3. To prepare for the inevitable mutation of the fungus, scientists at the USDA have broadened their search for resistance. They examined 87 Asian varieties of wheat, many of them old landraces, and found good levels of resistance in 26 of them. Better yet, some of the resistance genes seem to be different from the ones derived from Sumai 3, which means that they might offer protection against different varieties of the fungus.

Just knowing that various resistance genes exist, and having markers to select more resistant crosses from breeding efforts means that future outbreaks can probably be more effectively dealt with, which is reassuring. More to the point, for our purposes, this research raises again the question: how can anyone doubt the value of genebanks? Just one disease cost just one country US$2.7 billion over three years. Genebank accessions contain the solutions. Do you really need to know the cost of every accession to decide whether genebanks are worthwhile?

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Measuring diversity in Tibetan walnuts

You collect leaves from 220 walnut trees of two morphologically very distinct species (Juglans regia and J. sigillata) from two unrelated groups of families of villagers in each of six different villages in Tibet. You get the gene-jockeys to do their microsatellite stuff on the leaves. You calculate the contribution of species, of the kin relationship of the growers and of village to genetic diversity. You expect the biggest genetic differences to be between species.

You are wrong.

Yes, the “species,” which look totally different, are in fact indistinguishable genetically. But there were significant differences among villages, and smaller but still significant differences between unrelated families of farmers within villages. So, you might be particularly interested in certain traits, for improvement say (and so are the farmers: walnut landraces in this part of Tibet are often named after fruit phenotypes). But — in this case — morphology is not a great guide to the totality of the underlying genetic diversity. So you can’t use it alone for conservation.

Which is also the conclusion researchers in Benin arrived at in their study of another tree, akee (Blighia sapida), also just out. A conservation and use (domestication, in this case) strategy “should target not only the morphotypes recognized by local populations but should also integrate the population genetics information.”

Does this amount to a general rule?

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Battling it out over drought-tolerant maize in Africa

Maize in Africa is becoming a bit of a battlefield in the agri-culture wars. The BBC has a radio programme on the Water Efficient Maize for Africa project, which is a partnership between national programmes, CIMMYT and Monsanto, with a lot of work being done in Kenya. Predictably, it is very biotechnology-oriented, with marker-assisted selection and genetic modification to the fore.

At the other end of the spectrum, Scientific American has an article on a GEF project (funding comes also from Norway and the Netherlands) at Sakai, Kenya which is very different.

Agricultural extension officers now offer seasonal and locally relevant climate predictions explained in simple terms in Kikamba, the regional tribal language. They are now producing a handbook to translate weather predictions into practical advice about what and when to plant.

The project has also helped farmers set up a seed bank. A group of about 40 men will collect, process and preserve the best local seeds and loan them out again during the next planting season, slowly selecting for the best climate-adapted varieties.

Sakai’s farmers are hedging their bets. Increasingly, they are diversifying their crops by planting more drought-tolerant grains, peas and beans.

One wonders whether the two projects are even aware of each other, let alone talking. Maybe someone will tell us.