Category: Featured

Cary also thinks we should do something about that 75% thing:

FAO has long needed to correct the record. Yes, it is like something generated from a game of “Chinese Whispers” as mentioned in one of your earlier posts. But hey, maybe it’s become a meme by now! What would Richard Dawkins have to say? I’m guessing he would wish you good luck in reeling this back toward reality, whatever that is.

Best meme gets a prize.

Paul Gepts, who should know, says that the bit of Mexico featured yesterday is pretty important:

This particular area of the state of Jalisco is part of the proposed Mesoamerican center of domestication of common bean (Kwak et al. 2009 Crop Sci.).

Here’s the relevant quote from that paper:

In the Mesoamerican gene pool, a single cluster groups most of the domesticated type, which confirms previous observations suggesting a single domestication located in the state of Jalisco form this gene pool (Gepts et al. 1986; Papa and Gepts 2003; Kwak et al. 2009).

Glenn is ready to take up our challenge on crop distribution mapping:

I suppose that you could use “big data” & machine learning to find individual crop patterns in all that data. I think that some people are doing this kind of thing, but it’s private sector stuff. The global crop maps rely too heavily on data from surveys and censuses, and all the problems that come with those in terms of standardizing across countries.

Kinda. Sorta.

Susan Bragdon sounds frustrated:

It seems like the studies at least both confirm the dynamism in managing and developing landraces. One would expect some to go out of use and new landraces to emerge (good reason, amongst others, to have ex situ collections to have “snap shots” over time). I know I am saying nothing new to this audience, but in international circles — even some parts of the international world specifically addressing biological diversity (I can tell you about the Human Rights Council Resolution on Biological Diversity adopted in March as an example) — the idea that farmers are more than preserving a static pool of genetic resources is not well-understood. And don’t get me going on understanding the links to health, employment, peace…

What brought this on now, Susan? And if you want a platform for discussing those links, we do take guest posts.

Tom Payne of CIMMYT was a bit worried about that Global Crop Loss Survey:

The wheat data suggests that a preponderance of responses came from Europe (where the trio of disease septoria tritici-yellow rust-fusarium head blight are prevalent). Interestingly, the emerging threats of “Ug99 types” of stem rust and wheat blast are not revealed though they may have far more dramatic impacts on a global basis.

But Andy Nelson has it covered:

Around 30% of wheat responses came from Europe, with the rest fairly well distributed in wheat growing areas around the rest of the world. Stem rust and wheat blast are in the complete list of response with numbers and locations that reasonably reflect their emerging threat status. They’re just not in the top five that we included in this preliminary report to the ISPP. More analysis and details will come though.