Remember the recent post about ylang ylang? Timbuktu Chronicles sent me to an oldish article from South Africa’s Mail & Guardian which lists the tree among Madagascar’s fragrant exports. But the article is really about a rare and threatened Malagasy orchid and how it will be cultivated for the French perfume industry. I hope everyone has their ABS arrangements down tight.
Is the kouprey a species?
The kouprey is a very elusive wild bovid that is said to roam the Southeast Asian jungle. It was only discovered by outsiders at the beginning of the last century, but it has seldom been seen since and there are concerns that it may, in fact, already be extinct. (It is currently listed on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species). As if that wasn’t bad enough, there is now a vigorous debate about whether the kouprey is — or was — in fact, a separate species at all, or merely some type of feral hybrid.
A report published some months ago in the Journal of Zoology showed that a comparison of mitochondrial DNA obtained from several banteng revealed some homology — similarity — with a previously published DNA sequence from a kouprey. ((Galbreath et al., 2006. J. Zool. 270:561)) The banteng is another bovid that has to some degree been domesticated, but can also still be found in the wild in several Southeast Asian countries. Based on their analysis, the authors concluded that the kouprey is more than likely just a hybrid originating from crosses between zebu cattle and the banteng. Now, some might argue that it is pretty bold to reach such a profound conclusion based on a very small sample size, and not surprisingly some have indeed so argued. They have pointed out that anatomical and even DNA evidence from their own studies did not support stripping the kouprey of its species status. ((Grigson, 2007. J Zool. 271:239; Hassanin and Robiquet, 2007. J. Zool. 271:246)) An alternative explanation might simply be that there has been introgression of DNA from one species into the other by occasional matings. And there is ample evidence that this has happened in other species. Cattle DNA is commonly found in the American bison, for example, because of past attempts by cattle breeders to generate what they thought would be more viable bison-cattle hybrids. ((Rasmussen et al., 2005. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 70:228))
What is clearly needed to settle the matter is additional analysis of nuclear DNA obtained from more than one kouprey. But if the animal has, indeed, already disappeared, that may prove to be difficult. ((Contributed by Michael Kubisch))
Archaeology of chili peppers
Remains of oldest Mexican takeaway found.
New efforts to domesticate grasses down under
The Australian Research Council has awarded A$ 1 million to Professor Robert Henry of Southern Cross University to examine about 1000 native grass species as potential replacements for wheat, rice and maize. The grant is framed as a response to global warming, but it is pretty interesting under any circumstances. Henry, Director of Southern Cross University’s Centre for Plant Conservation Genetics, told the Australian Associated Press that
the project targets the accelerated domestication of native species which have lower tillage and fertiliser requirements and increased salt, shade, frost and or drought tolerances than the current introduced cereal and fodder crops.
Of course, those grasses have been around since the first farmers landed in Australia, but they never tried to do anything with them. Because they couldn’t?
There is a great opportunity to use the new techniques of modern biology to accelerate the domestication of some of the more promising Australian native species.
Preliminary results are expected within three years, and seeds will be made available through a partnership with Native Seeds Pty Ltd. We shall see.
Ancient Andean agriculture
Meanwhile, on the Western slopes of the Andes, at about the same time as their cousins half a world away were domesticating the cat — which is a lot earlier than has been thought — people in what is now northern Peru were growing peanuts, squash and cotton. That’s according to well-dated macrofossils, as reported in a paper co-authored by our friend and peanut expert David Williams, and picked up in the mainstream press.
We’ve blogged before about recent work that is pushing back the date of agriculture in the New World. There’s a great review of the latest thinking on the “roots of agriculture,” including in the Americas, in the latest Science, but you’ll need a subscription to read it, unfortunately. Anyway, to summarize heroically the new consensus arising from collaboration among geneticists and archaeologists, it seems the process of crop domestication probably took much longer than previously imagined, thousands rather than hundreds of years. And that it may have started at about the same time in different parts of the world, perhaps as a result of changes in climate (and levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere).