Category: Climate change

Posted on

“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.

Posted on

Nibbles: Red rice, Drought squared, Slow Food, Coffee, Cassava, Horses, Wheat, Ketchup

  • Saving red rice in India. Note comment from Bhuwon.
  • India again: “We have not been able to sow rice. Our corn crop has been destroyed by pests. We have nothing to eat. We have nothing to feed our cattle.”
  • Morocco: “The farmers started using more subterranean water, but that has almost been used up, putting us on a straight line to desertification.” But, “[r]esearchers have also introduced new varieties of grain that in laboratory tests have proven resistant to water stress or drought.”
  • Another Slow Food interview. Zzzzzzzzzz.
  • Cuppa weird joe?
  • IITA and others save cassava in West Africa.
  • Nice photo essay on a thoroughbred stud farm.
  • Take the wheat quiz.
  • Where is our heirloom ketchup?
Posted on

Nibbles: Fisheries, Mangroves, European bison, Dormouse, Eating & drinking heirlooms, Apios, Kombucha, Organic and health

Posted on

“The rain and wind would come”

For centuries, the Kamayurá planted their summer crops when a certain star appeared on the horizon. “When it appeared, everyone celebrated because it was the sign to start planting cassava since the rain and wind would come,” Chief Kotok recalled. But starting seven or eight seasons ago, the star’s appearance was no longer followed by rain, an ominous divergence, forcing the tribe to adjust its schedule.

It has been an ever-shifting game of trial and error since. Last year, families had to plant their cassava four times — it died in September, October and November because there was not enough moisture in the ground. It was not until December that the planting took. The corn also failed, said Mapulu, the chief’s sister. “It sprouted and withered away,” she said.

That’s from a NY Times article from the Xingu National Park in Brazil. And it’s not just the Kamayurá’s cassava that is being affected.

Deforestation and, some scientists contend, global climate change are making the Amazon region drier and hotter, decimating fish stocks in this area and imperiling the Kamayurá’s very existence. Like other small indigenous cultures around the world with little money or capacity to move, they are struggling to adapt to the changes.

That eerily echoes the experience of the Tla’Amin people, a Canadian First Nation. But that’s another story. Back to cassava. Coincidentally, our friend and colleague Andy Jarvis has just shared a presentation which looks at the effect of climate change on cassava in Latin America.

Andy J Climate Change And Cassava In Latin America July 2009

View more presentations from CIAT.

Perhaps Andy will tell us whether the changes Chief Kotok described are in line with what his models are telling him.