Category: Breeding

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Diversity on air

I’ve been listening to a radio programme about diversity in action. Called The Evolution Boomerang, from Soundprint, it examines three cases where diversity is important to agriculture and the environment. There’s a segment on GMO cotton and insect resistance, a segment on the need for genetic diversity at salmon hatcheries, and a segment on selecting bacteria to degrade a chemical that had never existed on Earth before humans manufactured it.

All good stuff, if you have half an hour to spare. You will need Real Player to listen.

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The giant pumpkin story

Jules Janick, professor of horticulture at Purdue, wrote a wonderfully informative and entertaining brief history of giant pumpkins in last September’s Chronica Horticulturae (it starts on page 16). Regular competitions have been going on in the US since 1900, arising from state agricultural fairs.

The giant round orange phenotypes of C. maxima appear to be in a narrow gene pool out of “Atlantic Giant” (oblong phenotypes are called “Dill’s Atlantic Giant” developed by William Dill, a Canadian from Nova Scotia, Canada)… “Atlantic Giant” and related huge show pumpkins trace their origin to the cultivar “Mammoth,” recorded in the seed trade as far back as 1834…

Despite this narrow genepool, the genetic gains have been phenomenal (although of course cultural practices play a part too), as this graph of world records of pumpkin fruit weight from 1857 to 2007 shows:

pumpkin

The current mark stands at almost 800 kg. Seed of top specimens changes hands at huge prices (up to $850 for a single seed). Prof. Janick suggests that horticultural science has ignored this record of success.

Someone has accused academics in the agricultural arena of merely proving that the practices achieved by the best growers are correct. I suggest the academic and scientific community cooperate on this engaging problem for the delight of the public everywhere.

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GMO bananas or nothing?

Simplicity rules, not only in the minds of many researchers and farmers, but also, and to an even greater extent, in the press. Shades of grey, subtleties of interpretation, multiple responses to complex questions; this is not the stuff of daily journalism. But why not? Is there any evidence that readers really can’t cope with this kind of complexity? Or maybe it is the journalists who can’t cope.

There’s no other way to explain the appearance, yet again, of a story saying that genetically engineered bananas are the best way to contain banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) in East Africa. According to the article, “genetic modification offers a low-cost and timely solution to the farmers who are reluctant to use labor-intensive control measures”. Those labour-intensive methods?

A task force set up by the Ugandan government in 2001 in response to the outbreak of the disease reduced the disease incidence to less than 10% in areas where farmers adopted these measures. However, the implementation is not sustainable due to the high costs.

But I can’t see any reference to studies of those costs, which could be reduced even further if new methods for dealing with infected plants become widespread. It seems to me that the projected losses in Uganda ascribed to BXW — between USD 2 and 8 billion over the past 10 years, and projected future losses of up to 53% “if the disease is left unchecked” — are intended to push the country towards genetic engineering as the only effective response. There is a place for GMO bananas, as part of an overall approach that uses a diversity of methods and a diversity of varieties to tackle not just BXW but all the other constraints on production of bananas and plantains in East Africa.

“GM bananas can wait,” a letter to editor of SciDev.net by our friends at the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain as was, is as relevant now as it was 2 1/2 years ago. One extract:

Biotechnology is one tool among many. Banana farmers should not be scared into accepting GM bananas as the only solution to a problem for which other measures are proving effective, and which Uganda’s National Agricultural Research Organisation is also actively promoting, in addition to its work on GM bananas.

Now, how hard is that to explain?

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Nibbles: Sheep, Yams, Satellites, Payment for ecosystem services, Museum

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Amazing potato factoid: they’re high protein

People complain that potatoes are “only” 2% protein. But …

[P]otatoes are so prolific that you still end up with 500-1000kg of protein per year per hectare of potatoes, versus 164-500kg of protein from soybeans, 98-300kg of protein from wheat, and only 33kg protein from milk produced by cows.

Which is why, where the climate is right, potatoes should be a key component of urban agriculture and home gardens. You do have to eat a lot of them, just be sure not to peel them. From Tom Wagner’s blog.