Category: Featured

On that “wild landrace” rice, Mike Jackson echoes a thought we’ve often had:

I wonder if the accession number(s) of Kasalath (presumably from the International Rice Genebank Collection – IRGC?) is cited in the full article. I have often argued with IRRI scientists of the need to cite the actual accession ‘provenance’ of the germplasm used in research and breeding, rather than just referring to this variety or that. There is a myth that a variety with the same name is genetically the same. And from our own evaluation of IR36 accessions (I think that was the variety, or maybe IR64) in the IRGC made in the 1990s there were at least six different types – even though the breeders stated, with confidence, that they knew what was the variety and what was not. I also hope that the actual lines in which this gene was discovered have been pure-lined and a sample entered into the IRGC – under a new accession number, of course!

I looked at the paper, and couldn’t spot anything resembling an accession number, but it is pretty dense.

Jacob riffs on the (pointless) opposition of policy and agriculture, with suggestions about the kind of agricultural research that is needed.

The point for agricultural research is that it is not enough to focus only on boosting output. Research choices have implications for access to food. For instance, in many cases breeding for small-scale producers (who consume most of what they grow) may be more effective for food security than breeding for commercial agriculture, even though the latter may be more effective in terms of productivity gains.

Antonia continues a metaphor, and asks for opinions on GCP’s RSS feeds.

It’s a new website, so still lots of construction debris flying and lying about, and gaping holes here and there, but we’re working on it as we go along… Will be interesting to hear the views of others on RSS.

Let her have it here.

Jawoo Koo has the lowdown on that decision to use the SPAM crop maps for the yield gap atlas rather than, as it turns out, MIRCA2000’s:

The workshop organizer distributed MIRCA’s crop distribution maps to each country expert and asked for feedback on whether the maps adequately represented where the crops are (or aren’t) in terms of harvested area. Reviewing all the feedback comments and comparing the results against the SPAM data, the organizers established that “… In nearly all cases, the SPAM maps were more consistent with the feedback we received from the GYGA agronomists at the workshop.”

There are caveats, though. Read the full story.

Andy Farrow has some issues with crop mapping too:

I found Monfreda and SPAM were ‘better’ in different places when I was reviewing the legumes but still there are large areas of confusion between, for example, common beans and cowpeas.

Oh, and he too would like to know how exactly the people behind the Global Yield Gap Atlas decided to use HarvestChoice’s Spatial Production Allocation Model to do their mapping.