Genebanks

November 10, 2015November 10, 2015

Answering the big genebank questions

A couple of important conferences are coming up and, as readers know, we like to keep on top of such things. So if you’re going, and would like to blog for us, or are thinking of tweeting the proceedings, let us know. Some big questions are being pondered, so it should be fun.

First on the agenda is the Tri-Societies meeting, this year in Minneapolis, on 15-18 November. ((Wow, that’s next week.)) With that, the conoscenti will know, goes the award of the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources, which on this occasion will be presented to Dr Paul Gepts, who I believe is an occasional reader of our blog. Congratulations to Paul, who will deliver a lecture entitled A More Intensive Use of Crop Genetic Resources? Hopeful Future or Business As Usual? The answer seems, perhaps not surprisingly, to depend on more and better data.

Then in January there is PAG XXIV in San Diego and its Genomics of Genebanks workshop. Particularly intriguing is a talk from our friends at the International Potato Center, who ask Are you getting what you ordered from your genebank? The answer to that question seems to be: not always, but we’re working on it. Somebody mention better data?

November 10, 2015November 11, 2015

Nibbles: Apple duo, Biofortified lentil, Wild sweet potatoes, African supermarkets, Trees on farms, Botanic gardens history, Funny honey, Spice trade, Byzantine bread, Seed longevity, Edible wilds

In remembrance of apples past.
What makes for an “outstanding lentil“?
Sweet potatoes finally get a taste of the wild.
A tree for every season: ICRAF pushing trees both local and exotic.
Can Zambian supermarkets support local farmers AND make money? Should get some of those tree products in there.
Touring the oldest botanical gardens would make for a great round-the-world trip.
Though I’d probably want to add a quick diversion to taste hallucinogenic honey in Nepal.
‘Twas pepper built Venice. That and bread.
Defence-related genes important in seed longevity.
What the heck are microgreens? And will they be discussed at the International Symposium on Biodiversity and Edible Wild Species in Turkey next November?

November 9, 2015November 9, 2015

Brainfood: Wild barley diversity double, Sesame diversity, Coconut genome size, Giant anteater, Sucking mangoes, Teff development, PhilRice, Korean soybeans, Coffee forest management, Switchgrass diversity, Yam diversity

Analysis of Correlations Between Climate and Molecular Adaptive Evolution of Wild Barley with Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Some genes are associated with climatic variables in wild barley, others not so much.
Molecular Genotyping of Historical Barley Landraces Reveals Novel Candidate Regions for Local Adaption. Latitudinal structuring in northern European barley landraces down to 7 SNPs. Not clear if related to above.
Morphological and genetic diversity assessment of sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) accessions differing in origin. Not much geographic structure.
Ploidy and domestication are associated with genome size variation in Palms. Tall coconuts show more variation in genome size than dwarfs.
Protected areas effectiveness in maintaining viable giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) populations in an agricultural frontier. I just wanted to link to a paper on the giant anteater.
Genetic Diversity in Seedling Populations of Mango. What exactly are “sucking purposes”?
Diversifying crops for food and nutrition security — a case of teff. Hipsters will save orphan crops.
Conservation of Rice Genetic Resources for Food Security. In the Philippines genebank, that is.
Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merrill]: Importance as A Crop and Pedigree Reconstruction of Korean Varieties. 168 of 178 varieties released in the last 100 years in Korea can be traced to 4 pedigrees.
In-situ Conservation of wild forest coffee — Exploring the potential of participatory forest management in south west Ethiopia. It’s the communities, stupid.
Switchgrass Germplasm Resources. Upland and lowland ecotypes, different ploidy levels, latitudinal differentiation, and a national collection at USDA to play with.
Participatory evaluation of Guinea yam (Dioscorea cayenensis Lam.–D. rotundata Poir. complex) landraces from Benin and agro-morphological characterization of cultivars tolerant to drought, high soil moisture and chips storage insects. 5-15% of over 400 varieties (including duplications) are good for one thing or another.

November 5, 2015November 5, 2015

Nibbles: Seed Treaty, Grelo festival, Large tomatoes, Saffron collecting, Enset redux, Grassland diversity, Census 2016, Organic definition, Dalit seeds, Ancient wheat DNA, Ancient American farmers, Tree adaptation, Syrian crops at OFN

What civil society said at the latest Governing Body meeting of the ITPGRFA earlier this month.
Google Translate fail puts spotlight on the cruciferous crop I’ve always known as fiarielli but which is sometimes called rapini. Both names kinda suck.
That’s one huge tomato.
That’s one expensive spice.
Rediscovering enset.
Grassland biodiversity good for resilience to climate change.
Global agriculture: here comes the data.
Deconstructing organic. The word, that is.
Empowering dalit farmers by recognizing their knowledge of seeds.
That ancient underwater wheat DNA wasn’t so ancient after all. Maybe.
It was migrants who forced the ancestors of the Pueblo people to move.
Local adaptation in trees: what has it ever done for us?
Another way to safeguard Syrian crop diversity.

November 5, 2015November 5, 2015

The magic of Svalbard

A short distance from the North Pole, there is a Norwegian island called Spitsbergen. On this remote piece of dry land in the very boreal archipelago of Svalbard is the Global Seed Vault, the world’s underground seed store. Within the concrete walls of a warehouse built to withstand even a nuclear war are endangered seeds from around the world. Among them, until four years ago, there were 40 ancient black Peruvian corn grains that a student of agronomy from Cremona — only 16 years old — has now seen fit to make the cornerstone of his company: the agricultural startup of Carlo Maria Recchia.

That sounds easy enough, but Carlo Maria, selected by Coldiretti Giovani as one of Italy’s the most promising young farmers, had to insist to get those seeds, and not a little either. First, with his school, and then through the Ministry of Agriculture. “Then I spent two years multiplying the seeds so I could start to farm,” Carlo told The Food Makers. “Today I produce beer, biscuits, flour, and breadsticks and other products are coming.”

That’s my translation of a piece on StartUpItalia!. Which, yes, I’m afraid insists on the exclamation mark. And, yes, which I’m afraid is utter tosh.

Because there is just no way on earth that Carlo Maria got those black Peruvian maize seeds from Svalbard, Italian Ministry of Agriculture or no Italian Ministry of Agriculture. Only organizations that have deposited seeds in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault can withdraw them, and then only the ones they deposited. And only one organization has ever asked for its seeds back, just a few weeks ago. Making seeds of black Peruvian maize available to random farmers — no matter how young and promising — is just not what Svalbard does.

So I don’t know where Carlo Maria got his seeds. But I can guarantee that it wasn’t Svalbard. Genesys says there are 27 maize accessions from Peru with dark seeds, from the USDA collection. Maybe he got them from there, or from CIMMYT, and given that a lot of that material is safety duplicated in Svalbard, figured he would try to have a little of the stardust rub off on him.

Whatever. I wish him luck, the kid will probably go far. In politics if not farming.