Category: Breeding

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Day 1 at the Amman drylands conference draws to a close

The afternoon plenary (see here for the morning) consisted of talks by Drs Adel El Beltagy (GFAR) and Mark Rosegrant (IFPRI). Again, here’s what struck me particularly out of the many interesting things they said.

  • Svalbard Global Seed Vault provides a Noah’s Ark for the world’s crop germplasm collections, which we’ll need for both adaptation and mitigation.
  • Transboundary livestock diseases will increase, but there are opportunities for mitigation through better livestock genetics, feeding and management.
  • Agro-ecosystems will be disrupted by climate change, and we don’t have the methods to predict what the new ones will look like, or whether they will be able to function.
  • Nanotech can be used not just in a bunch of molecular genetics applications, but also for smarter delivery or inputs.
  • It’s not just climate change: there’s a host of both demand and supply drivers behind the bad stuff that’s happening to food security.
  • Biophysical models predict following changes in global production: irrigated rice -27% (but N. China a winner); rainfed rice -13%; irrigated maize -13% (it will reach the Canadian border!); irrigated maize -16% (N. China a winner again); irrigated wheat -42% (disaster in India); rainfed wheat -28% (India again in trouble).
  • Add economic models to that and you have a predicted doubling of prices by 2050, a 22% drop in calorie consumption in developing countries and a 21% increase in child malnutrition in developing countries.
  • To fix this, via expansion of irrigation, better roads and more research, will cost an extra $7 billion a year, on top of the current $12 billion being spent on those things now.
  • Increased productivity is fundamental, sure, but let’s not forget rural infrastructure.
  • There may well be a potential $150 billion a year up for grabs for agriculture if a decent C trading system develops. But will need low-cost monitoring and verification, and innovative payment schemes.
  • We’re going to need better local scenarios, but the danger of that is that you begin to not see the wood for the trees (too much weather, not enough climate).
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    Day 1 at the Amman drylands conference

    The international conference on Food Security and Climate Change in Dry Areas got off to a stirring start with a long, passionate and scientifically very literate speech from the guest of honour, HRH Prince El Hassan Bin Talal. That was followed by keynotes from Drs Mahendra Shah and Mahmoud Solh, who have a huge amount of experience at the highest level of agricultural research and strategic planning in this region and beyond. Now, I did tweet some key points from their talks via my mobile, but as I write this over lunch they haven’t turned up in our stream yet. For all I know, they never will. Wifi access in the conference room is problematic, so you may have to be satisfied with these occasional summaries.

    Anyway, here are some selected soundbites — the agrobiodiversity themed ones, mainly — from the morning session, including the Q&A:

  • We will need to trade an extra 500 million tons of cereals by 2080.
  • 175 million extra people (over the 1 billion hungry today) will go hungry due to climate change by 2080. Remember we were supposed to cut that figure by half.
  • In the dry areas, production increases will need to come almost exclusively from yield improvement. 90% of potentially new arable land is in only 7 countries!
  • Genebanks are key to the intensification that will be required if agriculture is to adapt.
  • Synthetic wheats, winter sowing of chickpea, IPM of Sunn pest are some of the success stories of crop diversity use for adaptation.
  • ICARDA has identified those small ruminant local breeds which are expected to be most adaptable to climate change. What about the poor others, though?
  • Both “protected agriculture” (greenhouses, hydroponics etc.) and conservation agriculture have a role to play in adaptation (and possibly mitigation too).
  • Why are we closing down agricultural extension services around the world?
  • Global models for the effects of climate change are fine, but downsizing to community level is often problematic, and THAT is where adaptation occurs. Or doesn’t.
  • What can we learn from how local people manage the oasis ecosystem?
  • Governance is a problem, sure, but let’s not hide behind the failings of politicians in assessing why science and technology innovations haven’t worked.
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    Nibbles: Orissa, Salatin, Economic impact, Olives, Food security, Lettuce, Chayote

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    Cracking the code of dog diversity

    Another contribution from Michael Kubisch.

    Ever wondered why your rat terrier looks so different from your neighbor’s mastiff? Well, eons of selective breeding, of course, which have resulted in genetic differences between these two and other dog breeds. Man’s best friend was undoubtedly among the very first animals to be domesticated, although the huge variety of breeds found today is probably a much more recent phenomenon. Which part of the dog genome, or more pertinently which genes, were involved in generating this diversity remains largely a mystery — but one that many geneticists would like to solve.

    A first glimpse has now been provided by a group of scientists who compared genomic data from dogs belonging to ten different breeds using what is called single-nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs for short. SNPS are very helpful because the presence of a particular SNP sometimes is indicative of the presence of a specific allele at a nearby gene. Similarly, if there are SNPs that differ between two dog breeds it is possible that nearby genes may be different as well and that those genes may have played a role in what sets these breeds apart.

    The study revealed 150 areas of the dog genome containing more than 1000 candidate genes that appeared highly variable between those breeds that were examined. Not surprisingly perhaps, several of these genes are known to determine things like coat color, size, skeletal morphology and behavior. However, interestingly, several candidates included genes that are known to act as regulators of other genes, suggesting that some evolutionary changes are not the result of variant alleles of genes but changes in how these genes are controlled. More interesting insights are sure to follow.

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    Nibbles: Spud, Mali’s farmers, Pollan, Geneflow, Taiwan botanic garden, Pollinators squared, Vegetarianism