- The Arid Lands Information Network has published a briefing on Climate change and the threat to African food security.
- Free Seeds, Not Free Beer. A paper on intellectual property rights. Luigi asks: Why not both?
- Urban farming around the world, a slideshow. No wonder Back40 thinks its all hobby or hack.
- More urban farms in the US. Enough already!
- See the spud behind the Irish Potato Famine. Today. In Guelph. That’s Canada.
- Napier Stunt Disease threat to Ugandan milk production.
- The Ecosystems Map of the Northern and Central Andes is out.
Mo’ better modeling
Two papers in the Journal of Biogeography suggest ways of improving ecological niche modeling, by including soil data and by recognizing that the range of a species may not be in “equilibrium with its climatic niche.” May need to blog in more details about these…
Incidentally, modeling species responses to climate change is no longer just an academic exercise, it’s a policy tool:
Brazil has shown the way with extensive modelling, leading to zoning schemes where farmers can obtain cheap credit for planting crops recommended by the models. It is now among the top three exporters for ten global commodities, including coffee.
Swaminathan says genebanks vital to cope with climate change
Gene banks are critical to preserving the biodiversity needed to develop crops that can cope with climate change, says agricultural scientist M. S. Swaminathan.
‘Nuff said, I think.
Nibbles: Drought resistant rice, Bees, Bison, Coffee in Kenya, Cassava in Africa, Pigeon pea, Chickens in Uganda, Green ranching in the Amazon, Climate change, Dates, Museums and DNA, Organic, Ecology meet
- “Sahbhagi dhan is drought-tolerant and can survive even if there are no rains for 12 days.”
- Keeping bees in cities. Not as crazy as it sounds.
- More on the problems of the European bison. What is it with the BBC today?
- Coffee berry borer coming to Kenya. Not boring at all.
- Cassava helping Cameroonians and Ugandans.
- ICRISAT pigeon pea a hit in Kenya.
- Ugandan fishermen crying fowl. What is is with allAfrica today?
- No trees were harmed in the making of this beef.
- “How many of the changes we see happening around us are really attributable to climate change.” Pretty good question. In two parts, be sure to catch both, agrobiodiversity comes into the second.
- How to get a date.
- “By using museum specimens to look back in time, we can potentially assess … [human] impact in detail.” And genebanks, don’t forget genebanks, Olivia.
- Organic better after all. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
- Fisheries not as bad as was thought after all. But still pretty bad.
- For best results, use perennials in diverse landscapes and no tilling.
“It was serendipity that we had the seeds lying around”
Our title is evolutionary geneticist Arthur Weis to journalist Carl Zimmer on the topic of an experiment he and colleagues at UC Irvine carried out a few years ago where they compared those seeds — that had been “lying around” in the intervening few years in a cool, dry place — with seeds of the same species newly collected from the same sites. The result of the experiment was that…
…[t]he newer plants grew to smaller sizes, produced fewer flowers, and, most dramatically, produced those flowers eight days earlier in the spring. The changing climate had, in other words, driven the field mustard plants to evolve over just a few years.
The point of Zimmer’s article is that evolution can take place over short periods of time, and that because of climate change “life will undergo an evolutionary explosion.” ((We’ve blogged about this before.)) What Zimmer doesn’t say is that we have about 6.5 million similar samples of seeds in the world’s crop genebanks, and not by serendipity. Some date back decades. There would be a great research programme in comparing the genetic makeup of those samples with newer samples. Assuming that the populations are still there. And that there is enough documentation associated with the samples to find their original collecting sites.
A final thought. The assumptions behind the ecological niche modeling work which has been proliferating of late to predict changes in distributions, for example of crop wild relatives, is that the species don’t move or evolve fast enough to keep pace with climate change. They may well in fact evolve, adapt and survive, and that would certainly be a good thing. But helping them do that through in situ protection should not be an argument for downplaying the complementary importance of ex situ conservation. After all, with the kind of selection pressures likely to be involved, populations are very likely to be significantly genetically narrower in the future. Whether the species adapts or not, we’ll still need to collect seeds and store them in genebanks if we are to have available for use as much as possible of the genetic diversity that is currently — just — still in the field.