Sometimes a crop just doesn’t have the genes for it, as a good friend of mine who dabbled in taro breeding used to say. So then you have to try something else. “Zerihun Tadele is using the latest biotechnological methods to produce dwarf tef lines in order to prevent lodging, which causes significant yield losses.” The technique involved is TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions IN Genomes), an automated methods for inducing, and then detecting, potentially useful point mutations. But is there really no short(ish) teff variety among the 4743 accessions in the genebank of Ethiopia’s Institute of Biodiversity Conservation? By the way, IBC has just won the Sultan Qaboos Environmental Preservation Prize. Congratulations!
Cloning equines
Cloned racing mules. Cloned racing mules?
New pecan variety released
New pecan on the block.
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 …â€; 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.
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?