Just a quick note on two books on subjects close to our hearts here at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog: climate change and agriculture, and mapping species distributions. We’ll be trying to get hold of them for review. Preferably for free. Hint hint.
Genetic Engineering discussion continues
Ewan R takes up the cudgels on genetic engineering:
If the western world would invest 1/100th of the amount it blows on new methods of killing people into transgenics developed by the public sector for specific small scale problems the world would likely be a far better place (and the requirement for the other 99/100ths of that arms budget would also probably fall off dramatically)
Not sure why he singles out the western world, but let that slide. To which James responds:
As I see it corporate research is a separate pot of money. If it doesn’t get spent on genetic engineering it’ll get spent on marker assisted breeding for similar traits in similar crops. If for some reason it couldn’t be spent on crop improvement at all, it’d probably be spent on… I don’t know… advertising. … [M]oney spent in commercial research isn’t at the expense of humanitarian projects so it isn’t (or shouldn’t be) begrudged. (And when/if nitrogen use efficiency and drought resistant traits make it to market they’ll be worth every penny of that price tag.)
Which neatly encapsulates several of the ideas swirling around. Ewan is probably right that 1% of the “death” budget would improve life for billions of people. And James is right that the many pots of money simply aren’t fungible. What strikes me is that these kinds of points are discussed at our level, but the high-ups just don’t seem interested. In my naiveté I’d have thought that world leaders, business titans and gung-ho philanthropists would be more interested in finding out whether different approaches to their concerns might in fact be worthwhile. I guess they have more important things to think about.
Nibbles: Butchered, Drought, Extension, Deforestation, AnGR, Soyabean, Sagittaria, Urban ag, Grasslands
- Locavore carnivores learn their chops.
- Researchers from Michigan to study drought in East Africa.
- Researchers from Michigan to improve African access to research.
- Get online to save the Amazon.
- “When the National Animal Germplasm Program (NAGP) opened its doors a decade ago, it started out with genetic material from 40 lines of chicken…”
- And today’s genome sequencing project is…
- Hunting wapato.
- Mexican agriculture comes to LA.
- Today’s answer to climate change is…
Nibbles: Breeding, Vegetables, Early agriculture, Breeding course, Nabhan, Gardens, Sequencing twice, er no, once.
- Solanum porno.
- Veggie tourism.
- Something else to blame climate change for. Not.
- Wanna learn breeding?
- Gary does Turkey.
- Podcast on school gardens.
- Department of improbable claims: Sunflower genome holds the promise of sustainable agriculture.
- Ok then Mr Cynical, how about woodland strawberry, then?
- Not so fast, Mr Sunshine: No strawberry genome ::sniff::
Breeders not so bad after all
Speaking of evil plant breeders:
It is generally thought that continuous selection among crosses of genetically related cultivars has led to a narrowing of the genetic base of the crops on which modern agriculture is based, contributing to the genetic erosion of the crop gene pools on which breeding is based.
But this may be another faulty meta-narrative. At least that’s what a group of researchers from the Dutch genebank say, as a result of a meta-analysis of 44 genetic diversity studies of the varieties of 8 crops released in successive decades. ((Wouw, M., Hintum, T., Kik, C., Treuren, R., & Visser, B. (2010). Genetic diversity trends in twentieth century crop cultivars: a meta analysis Theoretical and Applied Genetics DOI: 10.1007/s00122-009-1252-6)) This is the result:
The meta analysis demonstrated that overall in the long run no substantial reduction in the regional diversity of crop varieties released by plant breeders has taken place.
Of course, that says nothing about the relative frequency at which these varieties have been grown by farmers, also an important aspect of overall diversity, along with how different the varieties are. Anyway, that decrease in the 60’s was only about 6%, and that has been reversed since then. How? Because of genebanks, say the authors.
In the 1960s and 1970s the introduction of the new Green Revolution-type cultivars for the major staple crops led to concerns on the disappearance of the world’s varietal wealth of crop plants. The widely shared concerns ultimately resulted in the establishment of a worldwide network of international genebanks hosted by the CGIAR research centres. The seed samples stored in these genebanks facilitated access of the world’s crop diversity to plant breeders world wide. It seems likely that the easy access to crop diversity provided by the genebanks, improved communication among breeders and easier exchange of seeds were factors contributing to the reversal of the initial trend in diversity reduction as observed in this meta analysis. Also the increased use of crop wild relatives for breeding and in recent years the use of synthetic wheats will have contributed to the observed diversity increase.
Well, it will be interesting to see, in due course, whether the restrictions on access which followed the Convention on Biological Diversity, had an effect, and whether the International Treaty on PGRFA eventually set the world to rights. As it was designed to do.