Category: Featured

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.

Eve Emshwiller sets Between the Lines straight on this whole oca thing:

The Andean tuber that has an effect on testosterone is not oca, Oxalis tuberosa, but another Andean tuber that looks even more like oca than potatoes do: Tropaeolum tuberosum, which has several common names in different parts of the Andes, such as mashua, añu, and isañu.

So many Andean roots and tubers, so little time…

Theo is unrepentant about picking on the dead souls in the wild leeks drawer, and throws down the gauntlet:

How many of the one point four million accessions in Europe actually exist, how many are alive, how many of these are available for distribution (sufficient seed), and how many of these are actually distributed on request? And what should we aim at in this regards? We should organise ourselves, identify the difficulties and try to take them away — as a community. We can’t do that by pretending everything is perfect. Let’s get some clothes for the emperor!

And Lorenzo is ready with needle and thread.

Tom Payne of CIMMYT has a question:

I was wondering if you had ever come across pre-breeding within a crop wild relative species? Not the intercrossing of CWRs with cultivated species, but (for this example) the intercrossing of T. timopheevi accessions to reveal enhanced levels of additive genetic variability, perhaps selecting materials for specific cytoplasmically controlled traits? Thus, from a very limited pool of X number of accessions, Y more accessions could be derived increasing the amounts of materials available to users.

Any takers?