Breeding

March 2, 2010March 2, 2010

UG99 in the internet mainstream

It was Lord Beaverbrook, I think, who said that if something had not been reported in his once-mighty Daily Express, then it hadn’t happened. ((No, I’m not going to check.)) For netizens of the modern age, much the same could be said of MetaFilter; if it isn’t there, it’s nowhere. And so it came to pass that UG99, recently covered by Wired magazine and Nibbled here, is officially a threat; it says so on MetaFilter.

I’m not actually a member, nor do I care to be. ((Too much on my plate.)) But if I were, I’d be responding to some of those comments, oh yes. And thanks to those comments, I’ve learned that the Wired piece’s author keeps a blog, which contains stuff that had to be left out. Cool.

February 23, 2010February 23, 2010

Nibbles: Genomes, Sorghum squared, Tropical forests, UG99, Vanilla, Himalayan agriculture

And today’s 500 genomes are … h/t OpenHelix.
FAO uses sorghum to deliver food security in Matabeleland North.
Meanwhile … science alert: sorghum’s family tree delineated, scope for breeding from wild relatives.
Small family farms can provide lots of food and preserve tropical forest biodiversity, say researchers. Actual paper not yet available.
Wired magazine does UG99 wheat rust. Read it and weep.
And in other fungus news, Fusarium hits vanilla in Kerala.
“Ladakh’s youth … are increasingly switching from backbreaking agriculture in the harsh terrain to more profitable jobs in the booming tourism industry.” Twas ever thus.

February 21, 2010February 21, 2010

Nibbles: Irrigation squared, Saffron, Chickpeas, Coastal trees, Cucurbits

Wanna grow plants in the Jordanian desert? Invest $250,000.
Wanna grow plants in the Maharashtra summer? Invest $20.
There’s a world saffron crocus collection. Who knew? A review is coming.
Coloured chickpeas contain more antioxidants. Well, yeah.
SciDev.net says scientists say coastal trees not much good against tsunamis, and may be bad news generally.
Rhizowen crosses species barriers, develops ficifoliaphilia, poor chap.

February 20, 2010February 19, 2010

Crop improvement in the news

Two stories of collaborative crop improvement — past, present and future — and the genebanks that underpin it to end the week with.

From an IRRI press release out today on IRRI’s collaboration with the Philippines:

Filipino farmers have adopted more than 75 IRRI-bred high-yielding rice varieties since 1960, have greatly improved their fertilizer and pest management strategies, and are implementing water-saving technologies.

It is telling that a particular point is made of the Filipino material in the IRRI genebank.

…in the International Rice Genebank housed at IRRI, 4,670 rice samples from the Philippines are conserved, including 4,070 traditional varieties, 485 modern varieties, and 115 wild relatives — all are available to share with Filipino farmers and scientists.

And from USDA’s Agricultural Research magazine, Feb. 2010 edition:

Of 1,768 heirloom wheats submitted since 2005, only 78 (or 4.4 percent) showed resistance to Ug99 at the Njoro site. Still, the prescreening led to identification of more Ug99-resistant wheat accessions than would’ve been achieved from sending randomly selected accessions for testing, says Bonman. This is evidenced by the fact that 7 percent of wheat lines resistant to U.S. races showed rust resistance in Kenya, yet only 1 percent of randomly selected accessions did.

I’ll be travelling for the next couple of weeks and blogging may be sparse.

February 19, 2010

Head of UNDP in GMO shock

Public funding for extension services and agricultural research that improves productivity and yield had to increase rather than relying upon genetically modified organisms.

From the head of UNDP? What kind of a crazy mixed-up world are we living in?