- Sweet potatoes in space. Why?
- Oblong grapes. Why?
- Mega targets of selection. Why?
- Uganda battles cassava and banana diseases.
- Increased bamboo production will not, repeat NOT, put the panda at risk.
- Mandatory disclosure of source and origin for Genetic Resources (GR) and Traditional Knowledge (TK) unpacked. Well, kinda.
- Gates funds cacao, cashew value chain. But not conservation, it seems.
Agrobiodiversity and the food crisis
UNEP has just published The environmental food crisis – The environment’s role in averting future food crises. ((Nellemann, C., MacDevette, M., Manders, T., Eickhout, B., Svihus, B., Prins, A. G., Kaltenborn, B. P. (Eds). February 2009. The environmental food crisis – The environment’s role in averting future food crises. A UNEP rapid response assessment. United Nations Environment Programme, GRID-Arendal. ISBN: 978-82-7701-054-0)) I found out about it because its illustrations are separately available on the GRID-Arendal website and I subscribe to its feed. Which is weird, because I’d have thought UNEP would make more of this. Maybe I just missed the announcement of the launch.
Any agricultural biodiversity in it, I hear you ask. Actually, perhaps surprisingly, yes. There’s a box on “Using crop genetic diversity to combat pests and diseases in agriculture” on page 57. There’s a box on “Enhancing sustainability through the use of crop wild relatives” on page 74. And, though admittedly it doesn’t address agrobiodiversity specifically, there’s a section on increasing research investment in agriculture on page 81. I’ll take that.
Rooting for the tubers
The Root Crops Agrobiodiversity Project in Vanuatu is inventorying varieties in various villages around the archipelago, and coming up with some astonishing results. ((Although an old Pacific hand of my acquaintance disputes the inclusion of the Solomon Islands in this statement from the press release: “In other Pacific archipelagos, such as New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands, the introduction by the Europeans of new root and tuber species, combined with the arrival of a market economy, has totally disrupted the existing systems.”)) But, crucially, the work will not stop there. One of the objectives of the project is “to identify new varieties aiming at broadening the existing genetic bases and to propose them to producers and users, taking into account their needs and preferences.” So it’s more than the usual 3Cs — collect-characterize-conserve. There’s also creation, and dissemination, of new diversity, via seed production. That’s not that easy to do with taros and yams, but then, neither is conservation in conventional field and in vitro genebanks. It’s a very sensible idea to get the diversity increasing and moving around, rather than locking it up on research stations.
Nibbles: Rescue, Biofuels, Striga, Dogs, Vegetable seed, Mulberry, Afghanistan, Aquaculture, Abaca
- Global Crop Diversity Trust “on track” to reinvigorate 100,000 varieties, “one of the largest and most successful biological rescue efforts ever undertaken”. Jeremy says: “Kariba Dam.”
- More reasons to go perennial. And native to boot.
- Farmers go crazy with Striga-resistant maize.
- Design-a-pooch just around the corner, thanks to genome sequencing. Well it was all worth it then, wasn’t it.
- AVRDC teaches Solomons farmers to save seeds, grandma to suck eggs.
- Mulberries cryopreserved. Yay! Now for that productivity.
- Turning grapes to raisins, swords to plowshares, in Afghanistan.
- District Fishery Officer (In-charge) tells of guy “farming in a floodplain adjacent to Coler Beel under the same upazila and earns a net profit of Taka 9 lakh after selling 80 metric tons of harvested fish from the Beel last year.”
- Abaca: quantity or quality?
Blogging the big birthday: Darwin the seed networker
Sure: “The Voyage of the Beagle,” “The Origin of the Species,” “The Descent of Man.” But also thousands of letters. Darwin corresponded widely, asking for information and opinions, checking facts. He was very scrupulous in giving credit, just look at the footnotes in his books. But actually the flow was not one-way. Yes, Darwin was a phenomenal networker. He would probably have had a blog.
His passion for networking extended to seed. He carried on a correspondence for some years with a Mr James Torbitt, a spirit merchant of Belfast. Torbitt had the idea that potato late blight might be overcome by using true seed. He wrote a treatise explaining how, and sent it to Members of Parliament and prominent landowners. With each pamphlet was a packet of 9,000 potato seeds. And he put an ad in The Times:
EXTINCTION OF POTATO DISEASE, with doubled or trebled crops – Modus operandi – Grow from seed. Exposure of plants to full force of infection. Destruction of those which succumb. Propagation of the by the sett. (In all places some plants will repel the attack of the parasite: in some, all). Seed supplied Address Robertson, Brooman and Co.; 150 Fleet Street, London. Or James Torbitt, Belfast, Ireland.
Torbitt asked Darwin for advice. Was he doing the right thing? Darwin assured him that he was.
Torbitt’s project illustrated in practice the idea of selection, which was a controversial issue among naturalists from the time of the publication of On the origin of species in 1859, and of the advantages of cross-breeding, hence Darwin’s … interest.
He allowed his name to be used in connection with the initiative, and pledged financial support: “between March 1878 and May 1881, through Darwin’s initiative, Torbitt received £410 from Darwin’s friends and relatives.”
Research on true potato seed continues. Darwin would have approved. And maybe even sent some money.