Category: Climate change

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Disappearing wild potatoes mined for drought tolerance

An article in National Geographic looks at possible changes in the climate of the Andes, how they will affect potatoes, and what breeders are doing about it. The wild relatives are very much to the fore:

“The crosses we are developing between wild, drought-tolerant varieties and modern potatoes now are for the future,” said Meredith Bonierbale, senior potato breeder at the International Potato Center in Lima.

The article also quotes our friend, colleague and occasional contributor Andy Jarvis, ((Andy works for CIAT and Bioversity in Cali, Colombia.)) who recently collaborated with others on a paper which concluded that some of those very same wild relatives are themselves threatened:

“Even if we halt habitat loss, in the next 50 years, climate change could undo all of the conservation that we already have,” said Jarvis.

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Malanga comes through Ike

Cuba has not been lucky this hurricane season. The latest storm to hit is Ike. Damage to agriculture has been extensive, but there is a glimmer of good news:

In Cienfuegos, plantain and sweet potato are affected, as well as vegetables and citrus such as grapefruit and orange. The one crop that hasn’t been affected is malanga – a tuber kind of like potato.

Malanga is Xanthosoma, and Cuban researchers have had a great interest in the crop.

As Grahame Jackson says in his Xanthosoma Yahoo Group post, “diversity of local food crops is so important in countries where there are threats from natural disasters, hurricanes, torrential monsoons, droughts.” Indeed. And we do have some idea of where the threats are going to be concentrated, and therefore where agrobiodiversity will be most needed.

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Climate change risk hotspots mapped

A SciDevNet piece on the report “Humanitarian Implications of Climate Change: Mapping emerging trends and risk hotspots” says that

The report, commissioned by CARE International and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), identifies Afghanistan, India, Indonesia and Pakistan as countries particularly vulnerable to extreme weather conditions.

But actually, looking at the map on page 26 from an agrobiodiversity conservation point of view, the countries I’d target — for germplasm collecting, for example — are Mozambique, Madagascar and Vietnam. The authors looked at flood, cyclone and drought risk. These countries are in for all three.

LATER: At least Cuba doesn’t seem to be at much increased threat, which is just as well!