A recent article in LifeScientist is a fairly conventional look at the eternal struggle for the soul of taxonomy between the morphologists and the gene-jockeys, though admittedly with an Antipodean slant. What makes it particularly interesting for us here is the choice of examples, which include a crop group in Citrus and its allied genera. It seems that molecular work suggests that the ancestors of the Australian genera in the sub-family Aurantoideae may have got there by “trans-oceanic dispersal,” possibly as a result of “cataclysmic events like cyclones.” Which sounds like something I need to find out more about…
GURT big mess
When are the knee-jerk opponents of genetically modified crops going to realize that genetic use restriction technologies (GURTs) are their friends? ((I’ve asked before, here, here and here, and never received even an unsatisfactory reply. But I’m willing to try again.))
The latest gusher of drivel comes from the International Institute for Environment and Development, which really ought to know better. In a press release designed to ride the intense interest swirling aound the World Seed Conference, which opened at FAO yesterday, IIED “researchers” point out that:
in order to continue conserving and adapting their varieties, farmers also need to be allowed to freely save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds. Technologies which restrict these customary rights — namely Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTS) — pose a very serious threat to genetic diversity, seed quality and the livelihoods of poor farmers.
New readers (and IIED researchers) should start here. GURTs (there are a couple of different kinds) are bits of DNA that are intended to prevent any seed that contains them from germinating and growing.
Why?
So that farmers cannot save their own seeds.
Which farmers?
Farmers who choose to buy the seeds that contained the GURTs because they think that those seeds offer them valuable advantages over other seeds.
Why?
Because a company invested a sackload of money in developing a variety. So the company is going to do two things to recoup its investment, and more. It must persuade farmers to buy the seed. And it must stop everyone else from making use of the investment without paying for it.
So far, note, this is nothing to do with GURTs, which in any case are not currently permitted in seed anywhere. It is one good reason why seed companies like to produce F1 hybrids. The seeds of an F1 hybrid are no good to the farmer who wants the same performance from the seeds she saved as from the seeds she paid for. In that sense, GURTs are a logical extension of the desire of seed breeding companies to protect their investment. You can save the seeds of an F1, but those F2 seeds are not a replica of the F1. The company wins, although canny breeders can easily dehybridize the hybrids, and even farmers can benefit from the flow of interesting genes into their crops.
Now, whereas F1 hybrids produce pollen that can indeed pollute the seeds of a neighbouring farmer exercising her right to freely save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed, GURTs actually prevent this kind of pollution. Any seed fertilized by pollen from a GURTed plant is effectively dead.
GURTs thus stop any characters bred into a GMO from being transferred into another variety of the same crop and into the crop’s wild relatives.
So, IIED, remind me, please: why is that a bad thing?
Does it stop the farmer saving seeds? On the contrary, it makes life easier, because the farmer does not have to worry about genetic pollution. She can, of course, still take advantage of good pollution, or introgression, if she wants to.
Does it stop her using farm-saved seed? No, how could it, when any polluted seeds are going to fail to grow. It makes using the farm-saved seed more secure.
Can she still exchange and sell farm-saved seed? You bet, and not only that, but her customers and swap-partners will be grateful that her seeds cannot possibly be polluted.
Opponents of GURTs seem to think that massive influxes of foreign pollen are the norm. They’re not. And I certainly wouldn’t want to accept, even as a gift, seed from someone who knew so little about farming and seed saving that they couldn’t even maintain their own varieties. Cross pollination from a different field is a fascinating and rare source of diversity in farmers’ fields, not the norm. GURTs pose absolutely no threat to farm-saved seed. In fact, I believe that they can enhance genetic diversity (by maintaining the separation between varieties), improve seed quality (for the same reasons) and have no impact at all on the livelihoods of poor farmers.
I hold no brief for or against GMOs, though I do think they have yet to prove themselves in the areas where they make the loudest claims. This is not about GMOs. It is about honesty. Any opponent of GMOs, however good the rest of their arguments might be, immediately loses my respect if they are also against GURTs.
Nibbles: Chicory symbolism, Watermelon disease, Olive documentation, Camassia quamash, Pig maps
- Chicory averts evil. Gotta get me some.
- Genebank watermelon material reveals sources of resistance to WVD caused by SqVYV. What?
- Israelis, Palestinians and Germans collaborate on DNA fingerprinting and quality evaluation of olive trees. Wait, what? Scroll down.
- Genetic structure of Native American food plant not really affected by Native Americans. This is the bulb that kept Lewis & Clark alive, apparently.
- Tracing Paper compares hog distribution in 1922 and now, finds little difference.
Chinese interdependence
A paper just out in Agricultural Science in China reminded me that I wanted to say something about one of the great meta-narratives of plant genetic resources: interdependence — the old no-country-is-self-sufficient-in-PGR mantra. Which, unlike some other meta-narratives, is generally recognized as being true — witness the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). And that despite the fact that measuring interdependence is not by any means easy, and has not often been done.
The paper which caught my eye is not really primarily about interdependence. ((ZHAO, Y., Ofori, A., & LU, C. (2009). Genetic diversity of European and Chinese oilseed Brassica rapa cultivars from different breeding periods. Agricultural Sciences in China 8(8):931-938. DOI: 10.1016/S1671-2927(08)60297-7.)) It just shows that cultivars of winter oilseed rape (canola) from China are very distinct from European ones, on the basis of molecular markers. Which presumably means that yield gains could be had from cross-breeding between the two groups. Which does say something about interdependence, but not very forcefully.
However, that paper reminded me about two others that a colleague had recently sent me, along with the thought that they should be enough, in a perfect world, for China to ratify the ITPGRFA.
The first is about soybean. ((Qin, J., Chen, W., Guan, R., Jiang, C., Li, Y., Fu, Y., Liu, Z., Zhang, M., Chang, R., & Qiu, L. (2006). Genetic contribution of foreign germplasm to elite Chinese soybean (Glycine max) cultivars revealed by SSR markers. Chinese Science Bulletin, 51(9):1078-1084. DOI: 10.1007/s11434-006-1078-4)) It shows, using molecular markers again, that a couple of elite Chinese cultivars benefited greatly, in terms of both specific traits but also their difference from previous Chinese cultivars (that is, the genetic base of the crop as a whole was broadened) from the fact that US and Japanese germplasm was involved in their development, rather than just Chinese stuff.
The second paper makes the interdependence point even more strongly by quantifying the contribution of foreign maize germplasm to production in China, rather than just genetic diversity. ((LI, H., HU, R., & ZHANG, S. (2006). The Impact of US and CGIAR Germplasm on Maize Production in China. Agricultural Sciences in China, 5(8):563-571. DOI: 10.1016/S1671-2927(06)60093-X.)) It turns out that a 1% contribution by US material (based on the coefficient of parentage) translates to an additional 0.01 t/ha (0.2%), and a 1% contribution by CIMMYT germplasm to an additional 0.025 t/ha.
The conclusion: “The extensive utilization of US and CG germplasm improved maize yield potential in China… The government should provide funds to support research on germplasm introduction…” And, we could add, it should ratify the ITPGRFA. No country is self-sufficient in PGRFA. Not even the largest.
Dog fight over canine origins
We’ve pointed briefly to recent studies on the origins of the domestic dog, where two schools of thought hold sway. The conventional version offers east Asia — China, more or less — as the centre of dog diversity and, by implication, the place where dogs were first domesticated. An apostate view is that dogs were domesticated in Africa and perhaps in Europe too.
There’s no clear resolution in sight yet, but it looks as if the Chinese dog may be on top. A news report in Science gives details of (and links to) a new and more detailed study from Peter Savolainen and his team:
The data reaffirm a single site for domestication and pinpoint the origin of the domesticated dog to a region south of the Yangtze River, where wolf taming was quite common, Savolainen’s team reports today in Molecular Biology and Evolution. That’s where the largest number of similar groupings of DNA, called haplogroups, is found. As the researchers looked at dogs farther from this region, they saw fewer haplogroups; Europe had only four, for example. “The gene pool we are finding in Europe and Africa are a subset of the South Chinese gene pool,” says Savolainen.
But the African dogs aren’t rolling over yet.
Carles Vilà of the Biology Station of Doñana-CSIC in Seville, Spain … points out that other genetic studies suggest dogs date back at least 20,000 years and that archaeological remains of dogs in Europe are almost as old. … “I’m not convinced by the results,” he says, “and I do not think this is the last that we will hear about the time and place of the domestication of dogs.”
That seems certain. Back in the days before DNA a multiple-origins theory was all the rage, but then, it was for H. sapiens too.