Category: Featured

Ed Carr explains my over-compressed Nibble about his recent post on aid and development:

I was arguing more about how we think about adaptation, and who is doing the adapting. Obviously adaptations will have to occur in some systems, but I am concerned that development donors and implementers too often assume that all such adaptations will have to come from outside the communities and countries in which they are needed. And this is a problem related to how we see those in the Global South – a persistent narrative of poor and helpless that causes us to overlook their capabilities, and to overestimate our own…

Indeed.

An item in Monday’s Brainfood prompted Brian Ford-Lloyd to revisit the concept of core collections. The paper looked at “similarity groups” in genebank holdings.

One important question they addressed was ‘why identify similarity groups?’ (not to be confused with duplicates), and only time will tell whether their expectations will be met.

However, there are other issues that occurred to me. One is the relationship with ‘core collections’ (which are not mentioned in the article) of which there are now many, even for a single crop such as rice, and which are proven to be of considerable use (see: Genetic resources and conservation challenges under the threat of climate change, Ford-Lloyd, Engels and Jackson – in Plant genetic resources and climate change – Jackson, Ford-Lloyd and Parry, 2014) (sorry for the plug!). So, having identified similarity groups, is it now necessary to go back and redesign core collections? This seems unlikely, but it would perhaps be worthwhile checking core collections to see the extent of occurrence of ‘similar’ accessions. This might have particular value, not necessarily to ensure maximised diversity within core collections. It might be useful to look for similar accessions to those that have already proved to be of value within core collections, possibly revealing similarly adapted accessions of even greater value.

Roel Hoekstra reacts to our suggestion that CGN may want to consider changing the taxonomic determination of a potato accession in its genebank:

In general gene banks should be conservative in renaming accessions and not follow the latest publication, unless there is a clear misclassification … The suggestion on this Weblog, that CGN should rename accessions CGN18108 (from ARG) into S. venturii should probably include all okadae’s from ARG. However, taxonomy is a sensitive issue. So far, CGN was reluctant to rename okadae accessions, in particular as long as Sturgeon Bay does not rename them. Too much renaming may confuse/annoy the users of the germplasm. The discussion on this Weblog at least triggers to take a look into the available data again. Personally, I would not be surprised to once find these two species reunited again.

That ellipsis stands for a pretty lucid summary of the nomenclatural history of the two species involved, very much worth reading in full. Thoughts?

So I asked whether James Ming Chen “would actually prevent seed saving,” and Clem rapidly shot back more questions.

If you mean “Will seed saving (legal or otherwise) actually be prevented” then I can’t say from skimming Chen’s paper cited here. However, if the question amounts to “Is he serious”, then I’d have to say – very much so.

I’m not finding any mention of publicly available germplasm in the piece, perhaps I’ve not looked closely enough. All the argument seems to be in favor of breeder’s rights and indeed there is plenty of disgust with the opportunity cost borne by breeding businesses that must invest in protection schemes so as to capitalize on their investment in breeding.

What I’m curious about in the seed law discussion on your side of the pond is how public domain germplasm will be treated… would seed of an heirloom variety be only available through gifting and non-commercial exchange? If someone grows a public domain seed and subsequently offers the same for commercial sale, will a purchaser have any recourse or claim if said seed is found to be other than described?

Ooops. I’ve just bitten the end of my tongue off, not rising to the bait of the “opportunity costs” borne by the poor beleaguered seed industry.

Grahame Jackson took us up on that be-nice-to-a-genebank thing:

SPC’s tissue culture lab in Fiji — the Centre of Pacific Crops and Trees — conserves a world collection of taro (Colocasia). Last year, CePaCT distributed 6250 taro as tissue cultures in 6 months to more than 20 countries around the world…

Always glad to hear the latest from my old stomping ground.