Category: Breeding

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A maize tour

SIRGEALC over, Marleni, David and I headed for CIMMYT, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre. That’s in Texcoco, about an hour’s drive from the hotel where we were staying in Mexico City (or three hours, unfortunately, on the way back). It turned out to be something of a maize odyssey. I’ll tell the story in pictures.

When we got to Texcoco, it was too early for lunch, but that didn’t stop us spending some time in the market sampling the local cuisine, as the quesadillas there are famous. This lady certainly made us some great ones. Note the two types of maize she’s using.

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Making cassava stronger in the Amazon

I had a chance to roam through the extensive exhibition of posters at SIRGEALC yesterday, and, although many of them were attractive and interesting, one in particular stood out. Actually, Dr Fabio de Oliveira Freitas of the Brasilian plant genetic resources programme (CENARGEN) had two posters up. That’s him in the photo below. One seems to be an update of his thesis work on DNA fingerprinting of archaeological maize remains, which you can read about online. That was interesting enough, but the second poster was even better.

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It told a great story from Dr Freitas’ work with a group of Amazonian indians. He’d been visiting a remote area right in the middle of the Amazon for about ten years when he noticed something he hadn’t seen before. In one village, one family had the habit of planting one stake of each of their cassava varieties all together on one mound. Later he found another family in another village doing the same thing. This is apparently an old custom that was more widespread in the past, and that for some reason is declining, although it is supposed to “make the cassava stronger.” Normally, people plant one or more stakes of a single variety in a given mound. But these two families built one somewhat larger, special mound in their field, and planted a specimen of each of their dozen or so varieties in it, so that they grew all together in close proximity, their spindly branches intertwining. That means more crossing among varieties, and more hybrid seedlings on the ground around the mound, for the people to select and nurture new varieties from.

It’s unclear why this agrobiodiversity-friendly ritual is disappearing, and what can be done to stop this happening. But my money is on Dr Freitas to find out and tell us about it soon.

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Nuts for makapuno

The redoutable Coconut Google Group has a great story from Roland Bourdeix about the Philippines’ makapuno coconut variety, ((Now, you may have to join the Google Group to read Roland’s post. But that would be no bad thing.)) drawing from an article in the Philippine Star. Makapuno nuts have a delicious and very valuable jelly instead of water, but can’t germinate. A makapuno palm will only have 15-20% or so makapuno fruits. The only way to get makapuno nuts is to plant a normal coconut from a palm with makapuno fruits and harvest that precious 15-20%. But that meets only 3% of demand. So in the 1960s Dr Emerita de Guzman came up with a way of rescuing makapuno embryos in tissue culture. When she planted the resulting seedlings, all the coconuts were makapuno. There are now nine labs in the Philippines churning out makapuno seedlings, but they’re expensive and few farmers can afford to buy them. I’ll let Roland tell the rest of the story, but here’s a little spoiler to whet your appetite: tissue culture makapuno palms were planted on a kind of artificial island in Thailand and something wonderful happened there…

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Planting a barrier to block UG99 wheat rust

An article in the November issue of Agricultural Research magazine, house organ of the US Department of Agriculture, warns: “World Wheat Supply Threatened!” complete with exclamation point. Well, yes, as we have indeed pointed out before. However, the article’s subtitle explains: “Luckily, research is under way to defend this grain of life.”

Phew! They had me worried.

Hidden in the write-up, which is to-the-point and interesting, is what struck me as a pretty off-the-wall suggestion. US scientists plan to focus resistant varieties (if and when they are developed) in southern states such as Texas, Georgia and Louisiana. The spores of UG99 can overwinter in the warm climates of the South, so the hope is that by preventing the disease getting a hold there, they can prevent it spreading to the rest of the country. Intriguing idea, but I wonder whether it really stands a chance.

There’s more in the article, on the resistance genes that might be inserted into US wheats and on the vital role of properly trained people in the field, who spotted UG99 early on and were able to sound the alarm.