Breeding

February 10, 2010February 9, 2010

In Jatropha cultivation, small is beautiful, boffins say

It hasn’t really taken all that long for the Jatropha backlash to begin. It is still often…

…claimed to produce biofuel and enhance socioeconomic development while reclaiming marginal and degraded lands in (semi-)arid regions (Francis et al., 2005), without competing with food production or depleting natural carbon stocks and ecosystem services.

But doubts are arising.

…the current knowledge gaps and uncertain economic perspectives, together with competition on the global biofuel market, might drive Jatropha investors away from marginal or degraded lands towards agricultural or lands that are valuable for biodiversity, in order to reduce financial risk.

That’s all according to a paper in Journal of Arid Environments. There’s certainly evidence to that effect from India, according to “ATREE, an Indian environmental research group promoting sustainable development.”

…new research shows jatropha, which has received huge government backing in recent years, yields less than experts had first predicted and is now being grown on fertile farmland — undermining two of its best selling points.

There have also been marketing problems. Listen, from Kenya, to “Mr Joseph Odembo of the Nam Lolwe [Jatropha Caucus] … and a member of the lobby, Action Resort for Change (ARC), the local NGO that invited the international [bio-diesel] agents:”

We have not been able to find a market for the trees which have been ready for the last two years but farmers are still optimistic that one day a good deal will come and they will be able to see the fruits of their labour.

What’s the answer? Is there one, indeed? Well, according to the Arid Environments paper, the problem is one of scale.

…the global hype could be harnessed to increase rural development by considering small-scale, community-based Jatropha initiatives for local use, like small Jatropha plantations, agroforestry systems with Jatropha intercropping, and agro-silvo-pastoral systems.

It wont come easy, though.

Implementation of this model needs important extension efforts through cooperatives and local networks having good insight in local environmental, economic, cultural and social processes. Their assistance in the introduction of Jatropha should start with the communication of correct information on land suitability including potential yield range, risk of yield loss, management practices and possible water competition (Maes et al., 2009), as Jatropha will not yield well on all sites for which its suitability has been claimed (Trabucco et al., 2008). Furthermore, these extension efforts should assist in acquiring plant material at low cost and in the post-harvest processing and product use as well (e.g., multifunctional platforms, see Havet, 2003).

The right sort of plant material, I would add, and not just at the right price. The germplasm collections are certainly out there. But are they being used?

February 10, 2010February 10, 2010

Nibbles: Vet, Pastoralists, Eggplant, US food map, Mexican food, Poultry, Maize, GMOs

What’s it like being the only vet in a country? The BBC tells us.
The CBD on how to be a good pastoralist.
James does a mini-roundup of the India GM brinjal to-do.
Mapping the fast food culture.
Mexico wants Unesco to recognize culinary traditions. As if tamales were in danger of extinction. Didn’t France ask for the same last year?
Heirloom chickens don’t taste like chicken.
Deconstructing the cultural significance of the colour of corn.
“GM crops: still not a panacea for poor farmers.” In other news, still no cure for cancer.

February 9, 2010February 9, 2010

Nibbles: Artichoke, Barley, Aquaculture, Organic farms, Pig conservation, Involuntary parks, Chokeberries, Grass evolution, sustainability

Jeremy says: Put an artichoke in your tank!
American boffins say: I know what, instead of making beer with it, let’s feed barley to fish.
Ugandan fishermen say: Want a “boutique” fish?
USDA says: “The nation’s organic farms and ranches have higher average sales and higher average production expenses than U.S. farms overall…”
South African animal genetic resources experts say: Save our pigs!
The Economist says (we paraphrase) war is good for biodiversity conservation … but where are the wild relatives?
Right here, in the boreal north, and we need to conserve it, and the knowledge to use it, say Canadian conservationists.
Rainfall, not temperature, was the trigger for C4 grasses say other American boffins.
“It’s a sloppy use of language to equate vegetables and food,” says Rachel. We agree.

February 7, 2010February 6, 2010

Drought resistance: “it’s complicated”

In case anyone out there is still wondering why all those early promises of drought-resistant crop varieties have been so long arriving, Ford Denison has a wonderfully clear explanation. He takes as his starting point a 2004 paper about the development of Drysdale wheat, bred in Australia for water use efficiency. And he came to that in search of counterexamples to his default view.

I’m always skeptical when someone speculates that we could double crop yield just by increasing the expression of some newly discovered “drought-resistance gene.” My rationale is that mutants with greater expression of any given gene are simple enough to have arisen repeatedly over the course of evolution.

The question Denison asks of Drysdale wheat is whether the tradeoffs that in the past prevented the selection of greater productivity — for example the ability to withstand drought being penalized in average and wetter years — are no longer relevant.

Rather than give away the answer, or attempt to summarize the key arguments, I just urge you to go and read the full post. I will, however, add a little tidbit I discovered all on my own (with Google’s help). You might think that naming a drought-resistant wheat Drysdale marks a marketing triumph. You would be wrong. It recalls Russell Drysdale, an Australian artist whose paintings of rural life in general and drought in particular captured the land and its people.

February 7, 2010September 23, 2010

Tying up some Amman loose ends

You’ve been wondering about those as yet unanswered questions from the Amman conference, haven’t you? Ok, here goes.

Jose Cubero asked why there are no commercial faba bean hybrids. He had no answer. The yield gain is considerable. BTW, did you know that protein content in faba bean is not negatively correlated with yield potential, as is apparently the case in other pulses? And that you can have totally selfing varieties, with closed flowers? I need to learn more about this crop.

Raj Paroda asked if aeration might be the answer to decreasing methane emissions from paddies. Well, it’s possible. Work in Japan is showing that prolonged mid-season aeration can cut methane emissions down to zero. But what will this do to yield? And what will it cost? Of course, “[m]any rice varieties can be grown under much drier conditions than those traditionally employed, with big reductions on methane emission without any loss in yeild. Additionally, there is the great potential for improved varieties of rice, able to produce a much larger crop per area of rice paddy and so allow for a cut in the area of rice paddies, without a cut in rice production.” See? Even when it’s not about germplasm, it’s really about germaplasm.

Theib Oweis wondered whether we shouldn’t measure — and select for in breeding programmes, by implication — productivity on the basis of unit of water consumed rather than of land used. Indeed we should, certainly in the dry areas. Potatoes had the highest yield per cubic meter of water of the crops on his list, and olives the highest economic return per cubic meter of water. You can get 8 t/ha of wheat, but the highest water productivity is actually at 6 t/ha. You need 1000 kg of water to grow 1 kg of wheat. I could go on and on, he had lots of figures like this.

And would you believe it, Ken Street did indeed think of a better way of identifying germplasm for evaluation, and it’s called FIGS.

How many did you get?