- FAO really very worried about cassava. Does it know that the CGIAR has the technology?
- In today’s “crop X domesticated earlier than usually thought” story, X = soybean.
- The Deccan Chronicle discovers the Bitter Gourd Project and likes what it sees.
- How to drought phenotype crops.
- The Christensen Fund has a position open for a Program Associate – Agrobiodiversity and Biocultural Landscapes. Damn, that sounds interesting.
- “But, miraculously, the Ghost Turkey survives.”
- Eurisco has a new website!
- Artisanal wheat on the rise. I love the quip in the caption.
- Vancouver ♥ Millennium Seed Bank, and fawns over faux royalty.
- Amaranth and pizza offer entreés to culture and politics.
Broadening the base for oilseed rape
Cabbages are the dogs of the crop world, trotted out whenever a point about diversity needs to be made. ((Photo by Paul Williams, found here.)) Brussels sprouts, Siberian kale, kohl rabi and good old boring Savoys are all members of a single species, Brassica oleracea, just as chihuahuas and great Danes are all Canis familiaris. If anything, though, brassicas are more complicated, because different species also interbreed moderately freely, much more so than the occasional doggie-style hybrid. One of the products of that promiscuity is the species known as oilseed rape, B. napus. Cabbage and turnip (B. rapa) apparently did their thing spontaneously “some centuries ago”. But they did so only a few times, and as a result the genetic diversity of oilseed rape is rather limited, depending as it does on the diversity present in those few original crosses between cabbage and turnip.
An obvious solution (obvious to plant breeders at any rate) is to reproduce those original crosses and resynthesize oilseed rape by arranging crosses between a more diverse bunch of cabbages and turnips, and indeed that is now old hat. Various programmes since the 1990s have created scores of “new” varieties of oilseed rape. The problem is that many of these have all the drawbacks of old oilseed rape, before the seeds were cleaned up of their nasty biochemicals and sanitized as canola. Merely crossing resynthesized oilseed with existing varieties in the hope of getting some of the better qualities of the new varieties into the improved cultivars is thus fraught with the risk of introducing bad stuff as well. The answer is backcrossing, breeding the offspring lines with their parents while selecting for the good qualities and against the bad qualities. As the authors of a new paper ((Girke, A., Schierholt, A., & Becker, H. (2011). Extending the rapeseed genepool with resynthesized Brassica napus L. I: Genetic diversity Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution DOI: 10.1007/s10722-011-9772-8)) note, this is
“a labor intensive approach and a long-term perspective, and appropriate resynthesized lines would have to be selected carefully.”
If you’re going to get into that, you may as well choose the parents for your breeding programme to be as different as possible from what you already have, to maximise the chances of finding something good and useful. Which is what the paper is all about. Andreas Girke and his colleagues measured the genetic distances within three distinct groups of oilseed rape and a collection of resynthesized varieties. They found, more or less as expected, that the spring, winter and Asian oilseed rapes were more similar to one another while the synthetic rapes were more diverse. Furthermore, and reassuringly, while the three groups tended to cluster as groups in a more detailed analyses of their DNA diversity, the synthetic rapes were roughly equally spread among the three clusters. The detailed analyses will give brassica breeders some of the information they need to breed better oilseed varieties. But a crucial question remains unanswered. How do offspring of the synthetic rapes crossed with established varieties perform in the field? The researchers crossed 44 synthetic rapes with two cultivars and planted out the offspring to measure how well they do and whether there is any relationship between the genetic distance between the two parents and performance in the field. But don’t get too excited; “The result of these studies will be presented in a separate publication.”
P.S. Many of the crops on which humanity depends are genetically interesting inter-specific hybrids, and re-doing the original, accidental crosses not only throws light on their evolution but also is of practical value to breeders. The whole business of resynthesized lines, which as far as I know began with CIMMYT’s synthetic wheat lines, is little known outside the esoteric world of plant breeding. It would be great to have a readable survey of the field, but I have not been able to find one. Anyone know of anything? And has resynthesis even been attempted for the banana? Answers, please.
Brainfood: Beans, Tree erosion, Climate space, Ecosystem services, Conservation, Pest management, Phenomics, Oca, Biodiversity research
- Seed Morphobiometry of Wild and Cultivated Taxa of Phaseolus L. (Fabaceae). Measurements confirm taxonomy; three big groups.
- Meta-Analysis of Susceptibility of Woody Plants to Loss of Genetic Diversity through Habitat Fragmentation. Pollination mechanism makes little difference.
- Running Out of Climate Space. Commentary on two paper in the same issue of Science; now, someone do the same for crops.
- The Future of Payments for Environmental Services. Any ag? Only in a negative way.
- Land, Food, and Biodiversity. Palm oil, pollution, pristine environments, population pressure.
- Avian Conservation Practices Strengthen Ecosystem Services in California Vineyards. Birds eat insects shock.
- Phenomics – technologies to relieve the phenotyping bottleneck. Just what we need for mo’ better characterization and evaluation.
- Diversification of the American bulb-bearing Oxalis (Oxalidaceae): Dispersal to North America and modification of the tristylous breeding system. Oca fans everywhere are agog.
- Global biodiversity research during 1900–2009: a bibliometric analysis. Somebody tell us; any ag?
Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here.
Brainfood: Kids and veggies, Common names, Markets, Barley genetic history, Inbreeding depression
- Exclusive breastfeeding duration and later intake of vegetables in preschool children. More breastfeeding means more vegetables later on.
- Common names of species, the curious case of Capra pyrenaica and the concomitant steps towards the ‘wild-to-domestic’ transformation of a flagship species and its vernacular names. Applying the common name of a domestic species to a wild one can cause problems. Yeah but how do you get across the importance of wild relatives otherwise?
- Testing the central market hypothesis: a multivariate analysis of Tanzanian sorghum markets. Lots of fancy maths proves there are basically two sorghum markets in Tanzania. But what does that mean for diversity?
- Evolutionary history of barley cultivation in Europe revealed by genetic analysis of extant landraces. Nine geographically-based populations, which go back to the early days of the spread of agriculture. Now, tell me someone, do they correspond with the human genetic data?
- Genetic erosion impedes adaptive responses to stressful environments. Stress reduces variability, which reduces ability to respond to stress.
Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here.
Brainfood: Broomcorn millet, Domestication, Stand diversity, South African ornamentals, Rice wild relatives, Agriculture under climate change, Wheat domestication
- Genetic diversity and phylogeography of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) across Eurasia. One origin or two? Moving east or west? We still don’t know, but crop wild relatives may tell us.
- Next-generation sequencing for understanding and accelerating crop domestication. Those who understand history may be able to repeat it.
- Competition among loblolly pine trees: Does genetic variability of the trees in a stand matter? Can’t really say either way.
- The potential of South African indigenous plants for the international cut flower trade. Could do better.
- Genetic variability of banana with ornamental potential. The Embrapa Musa collection has some really cool-looking plants.
- Cytological Behavior of Hybridization Barriers Between Oryza sativa and Oryza officinalis. I guess that’s why they call it the tertiary genepool.
- Ancient lipids reveal continuity in culinary practices across the transition to agriculture in Northern Europe. Crap on 6000-year-old ceramic vessels shows people in the Western Baltic continued to eat fish and clams even after agriculture arrived. Well do you blame them?
- Options for support to agriculture and food security under climate change. Show ’em yer multi-pronged strategies, that’ll get their attention.
- N.I. Vavilov’s Theory of Centres of Diversity in the Light of Current Understanding of Wheat Diversity, Domestication and Evolution. When genes flow from centre of origin, that centre will not coincide with centre of diversity.