Category: Breeding

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Pigmies huge worldwide

We have stumbled into a world of which I was barely aware. Sure, I knew a bit about falabella horses, and chihuahuas and other tiny dogs. But Luigi’s nine-word entry on mini-pigs has attracted more interest than anything else we have ever posted here before, at least in terms of the sheer number and persistence of the comments.

But there’s a whole farmyard of miniature breeds out there. Cows (and full grown bulls) that stand no higher than a man’s hip. Tiny Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats, to say nothing of the Australian Miniature Goat Association Inc. There are sheep that go through life struggling under the weight of being known as Olde English Babydoll Miniature Southdowns.

All of which — and there is lots, lots more — is testament both to the diversity within each livestock species and the overweaning desire of people to shape animals to meet their human needs. But really, what is the point?

When I was Googling away and whooping with amazement, my companion asked that very question. And, to answer herself, “I suppose if you had a very small farm …”; and her voice trailed off.

Back to the pocket pigs, obviously they are cute as can be, and lots of people want one. But what are they for? Fun, I suppose. Or very small hams. The people who are clamouring to own one probably don’t want to know this, but there’s a specific breed of minipig that has a registered tradename — Ellegaard Göttingen Minipigs ®; –and that was developed for the pharmaceutical testing industry; Dr Evil would definitely approve. As for the others, I confess to being slightly at a loss.

I’m reminded of a scene from an old Hollywood movie, possibly The Front Page, in which the grizzled baggy-pants old reporter quizzes the young cub, thusly:

GB-POR: Go downtown and get the details on that sex maniac.
YC: <looks very puzzled>
GB-POR: You know what a sex maniac is, don’t you boy?
YC: <looks somewhat sheepish> Er, no sir.
GB-POR: A sex maniac is someone who sells newspapers

A pocket pig is something that attracts blog comments.

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Another thing CWR can do

Nitrification is the oxidation of ammonia to nitrite. It’s an important part of the nitrogen cycle and all that, but bad news for agriculture, because up to 70% of applied N fertilizer can be lost to plants this way. There are synthetic nitrification inhibitors out there (e.g. dicyandiamide), but now comes news that a wild relative of wheat is also pretty good at slowing down the process. Researchers have identified the bits of the genome involved in biological nitrification inhibition in Leymus racemosus, and have managed to get them to do their stuff in wheat too. ((Subbarao, G. et al. (2007) Can biological nitrification inhibition (BNI) genes from perennial Leymus racemosus (Triticeae) combat nitrification in wheat farming? Plant Soil 299:55-64.)) Is there nothing crop wild relatives can’t do?

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Perennial wheat a little bit closer

Almost a year ago I blogged about a trial of perennial wheat being planted at Texas A&M University by Dr Charlie Rush. Well, the results are in now, and they’re encouraging. According to a press release, the grazing (they do that with wheat in Texas) was as good as annual wheat, and the seed yield about half. Another part of the study is getting under way, crossing the perennial wheats with regionally adapted varieties to try and produce perennial wheats that are better suited to specific conditions. And more detailed investigation of the perennial wheats will continue.

The really good news, as far as I am concerned, is that Dr Rush is now collaborating with Dr Stan Cox at The Land Institute. The scientists there have been such pioneers in perennial polyculture, I was kind of peeved that the first news from Texas A&M ignored them. It is very heartening to see mainstream scientists recognizing The Land Institute’s contributions and expertise. There’s also apparently been interest in the perennial wheats from what Texas A&M calls the Jon Innes Centre in Norwich, England. ((It is actually the John Innes Centre, with 1.3 million Google hits, versus the five for Jon Innes Centre.)) It is hard to tell what the JIC wants with perennial wheats; the release says something about habitat for wild birds. No doubt all part of the UK’s marvellous biodiversity conservation plan.

And in other wheat news, two rather heavy-duty papers about molecular biology. The first is a review of molecular markers in wheat breeding. ((Landjeva, Svetlana et al. (2007) Molecular markers: actual and potential contributions to wheat genome characterization and breeding. Euphytica, 156: 271-296. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10681-007-9371-0.)) If you’re into this sort of stuff, you don’t need this review. If you aren’t, it gives a reasonable history and summary and might help you to scythe your way through the thickets of jargon, acronyms and abbreviations. My main objection is the claim that “large-scale genome characterization by DNA-fingerprinting has revealed no declining trends in the molecular genetic diversity in wheat as a consequence of modern intensive breeding thus opposing the genetic ‘erosion’ hypothesis”, which takes a very narrow view of the genetic erosion hypothesis indeed.

And coming right along to bolster my belief, a paper showing that synthetic wheats are a valuable source of traits to improve varieties for baking and milling. ((Kunert, Antje et al. (2007) AB-QTL analysis in winter wheat: I. Synthetic hexaploid wheat (T. turgidum ssp. dicoccoides — T. tauschii) as a source of favourable alleles for milling and baking quality traits. Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 115: 683-695. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00122-007-0600-7.)) It is much easier to cross modern wheats with synthetic wheats (because they contain the same number of chromosome sets, six) than it is to cross modern wheats with either wild relatives or ancient wheats (which contain four or two sets). Kunert and colleagues crossed two wild species, revealing interesting genetic traits to improve qualities such as the amount of protein and the resistance to sprouting in storage, which can now be bred into modern wheats.

My feeling is that if all the genetic diversity breeders need were present in modern wheats, as Landjeva seems to think, then other scientists would not be spending considerable time and effort to create synthetic wheats from wild relatives in order to use them in breeding programmes.

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Cassava breeders unite

A press release from AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, gives details of cassava brown streak disease and a recent confab of breeders to tackle it. Cassava is the second most important source of calories for people in Africa, and the spread of the disease has been very worrying. The breeders say that they have resistant varieties, with more in the pipeline, but that stringent rules on the release of new varieties are hampering their efforts to get these to farmers. This sounds like an unintended consequence of rules designed to ensure high quality seed is available to those who can afford it; isn’t there some sort of mechanism for bypassing the rules in an emergency?

The breeders also say they are going to use a “new” idea called farmer participatory selection: give farmers the resistant material and let them choose the ones that best suffice all their needs.

“This farmer-participatory approach to plant breeding is a genuine and fairly recent breakthrough in crop breeding,” said George Bigirwa of AGRA. “Only a decade ago, such methods were considered by many to be ‘less scientific’ than selecting for maximum yields in trials grown on isolated research stations using high applications of fertilizers and chemical pesticides.”

At the meeting, cassava breeders from eight countries reported on the farmer participatory breeding work of their national research institutions. In many cases, the reports represented the first time that the breeders were testing their own locally-bred varieties, rather than varieties developed by others at distant research stations.

Now that does sound like progress.

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Modern soybeans cheated by lousy fixers

Ah, synchronicity. While Luigi was fleetingly confused about rhizobia and other bacterial symbionts of pigeonpeas, I was pondering one of the more interesting blog posts — and papers — I have read in a long time, also about rhizobia. Those are the bacteria that “infect” leguminous plants, forming nodules on the roots. In the nodules the bacteria “fix” nitrogen gas, from the air, into a form plants can use. In exchange, as it were, the plants supply the bacteria with a safe home and some of the food the plants have photosynthesized. Some rhizobia do a better job than others, and many are completely useless at fixing nitrogen. Better yet, the plants know, and send more food to the nodules fixing the most nitrogen.

Now, the tricky part.

Modern agriculture does not usually apply nitrogen to leguminous crops. But there can be considerable carry-over from the preceding crop. So, two possibilities arise. Maybe soybeans no longer respond to better nitrogen-fixing bacteria by sending more food their way, because they don’t really need the nitrogen. Or maybe more soil nitrogen means that the plant can afford to starve out all but the very best nitrogen fixers.

But why am I repeating all this? You cannot possibly do better than head over to Ford Denison’s blog, where he does a much better job than me of explaining the significance of his results. The paper is also discussed in Nature News.

Spoiler (aka don’t bother me with the details): modern varieties do very poorly when inoculated with a mixture of good and bad nitrogen fixers. It is as if they simply cannot tell the difference and feed both equally.

Stunning new idea: If modern varieties tolerate low quality rhizobia, then low quality rhizobia are going to proliferate in the soil, doing nobody any good. So why not deliberately breed legume crops to impose very strict sanctions against poorly-performing rhizobia strains? Long term this would enrich the soil with top-notch fixers.