- Metabarcoding of poop reveals secret of large herbivore diversity in African savannahs.
- Unique Omani banana fights pests.
- Truffle dogs: “Il cane, le corna non te le mette mai…”
- Traditional taro cultivation protects Hawaiian reef.
- Organic farming pays.
- Climate change favouring offspring of interspecies hybridization. Also in crops? Like brassicas maybe?
- Domestication of silk worm probed molecularly. Is that even a word?
- Video explains Baranaja. Spoiler alert: it’s the diversity, stupid.
- And along the same lines: rare seeds go home.
- Brazil wants to be among the top 5 fish producers in the world. What could possibly go wrong.
- Extracts from Jules Pretty’s book on what we can all learn from more nature-loving societies.
- The key to Inga conservation. Is keys.
- Community-based forest management in the Yucatan: “Future generations have the right to know them.” And not just the trees, bees too.
- Since we’re in Mexico: a visit to the genebank.
- The women of beer. None of them using cassava, though, alas.
- “El mercado tiene sus normas y los científicos no las conocemos”.
- Agro-commodity traders can be good for you. Somebody mention the market?
Brainfood: Indian germplasm, Fancy cores, African veggies, Aquaculture, Characterization, Nature and ag policies, European rewilding
- Indian plant germplasm on the global platter: an analysis. There’s a lot of it out there. But there could be more. And the total number of accessions in Genesys is mis-quoted by an order of magnitude. The message obviously resonates back home, though.
- Signal-processing tools for core-collection selection from genetic-resource collections. Fancy maths lets you combine data types to make better core collections.
- Impact of nutritional perceptions of traditional African vegetables on farm household production decisions: A case study of smallholders in Tanzania. People grow them because they think they’re nutritious.
- Can the Global Adoption of Genetically Improved Farmed Fish Increase Beyond 10%, and How? Through more public breeding, training and benefit-sharing. Well that sounds familiar.
- Phenotypic or Molecular Diversity Screening for Conservation of Genetic Resources? An Example from a Genebank Collection of the Temperate Forage Grass Timothy. Both.
- The alignment of agricultural and nature conservation policies in the European Union. It “remains a challenge.” Which means there isn’t any.
- Mapping opportunities and challenges for rewilding in Europe. Yeah, but see above.
The ins and outs of Indian crop diversity
Staff of India’s National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) recently published a very thorough analysis of the state of conservation of Indian crop diversity outside India. ((Jacob SR, Tyagi V, Agrawal A, Chakrabarty SK, & Tyagi RK (2015). Indian plant germplasm on the global platter: an analysis. PloS one, 10 (5) PMID: 25974270)) One of the take-home messages was as follows. Yes, India has not yet formally declared what material “under its management and control” (which in the jargon means basically the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources) is in the Multilateral System of the Plant Treaty. But the fact is that a lot of Indian material is already in it, via other genebanks, largely (though not exclusively) the international collections managed by the CGIAR centres. And also in Svalbard.
That’s fair enough. But it’s only half the story, as the authors themselves readily admit:
This analysis does not attempt, in any manner, to undermine the significance of the exotic germplasm material received by India during the course of time, irrespective of the source. India is a recipient of a large amount of germplasm over the period of time from multiple donors including CG genebanks and other national genebanks.
Fortunately, we have data on both sides of the equation. Among the papers in support of next week’s third meeting of the Plant Treaty’s Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group to Enhance the Functioning of the Multilateral System of Access and Benefit-sharing (sic) may be found “Twenty five years of international exchanges of plant genetic resources facilitated by the CGIAR genebanks: a case study on international interdependence,” a contribution from Bioversity. That includes the following table listing the 25 top countries providing germplasm to, and receiving germplasm from, the CGIAR centres over the period 1985-2009.
So India has contributed significantly to germplasm flows over the years — and also benefitted significantly. As has every other country on earth, I’m willing to bet. No getting around the fact that we’re all massively interdependent for crop diversity. (Stay tuned for more on that, there’s something in the works from our friend Colin Khoury that will approach the problem of quantifying interdependence from another angle…) Which is not to say that the functioning of the benefit-sharing side of the system cannot be improved upon. ((Remember, at the moment the system is, if you access material from the Multilateral System, and then do anything that takes any resulting product out of that system, you have to pay into the Benefit-Sharing Fund of the Treaty.)) And that of course is the task of the aforementioned Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group, and we wish them luck with the last round of deliberations that have been going on for over a year now. If you want to get an idea of which way their thinking is going, you could start with the draft of the resolution they would like the Governing Body of the Treaty to consider passing at their next big meeting in October.
Nibbles: Cuban heritage, Old food, Forest restoration, Botany in trouble, Community genebanks, Seed book, Beer genomes, Old wheat, Fowler/Naylor, Veggie kiosks, Breeding & data
- Cuba recognizes traditional medicine.
- Your grandma’s cooking was not that great.
- Using genetics to guide teak restoration.
- Botany dying in the US.
- Brazil sets up lots of community seedbanks.
- Aren’t seeds just great?
- The 1000 beer genomes project is as great as it sounds.
- Palestinians freekeh out.
- Interview with Cary Fowler: about Svalbard, and much more.
- Mama boga in trouble. Bastards.
- Nature calls for crop improvement.
Brainfood: Agrobiodiversity & nutrition, Solanaceae, Pepper resistance, Fenugreek erosion, Wild grapes double, CC & mountains
- Improving diets with wild and cultivated biodiversity from across the landscape. Only 12 papers on the link between agrobiodiversity or crop diversity and nutrition included nutritionally relevant information, so perhaps not surprising that we still don’t really know how agrobiodiversity or wild biodiversity contribute to overall diet quality.
- Biodiversity of Food Species of the Solanaceae Family: A Preliminary Taxonomic Inventory of Subfamily Solanoideae. 15 genera used as food, 4 have economic crops, but then one of them is Solanum.
- Diversity of genetic backgrounds modulating the durability of a major resistance gene. Analysis of a core collection of pepper landraces resistant to Potato virus Y. Breakdown of resistance conferred by given allele depends a lot on the background it finds itself in.
- Brief but alarming reminder about the need for reintroducing ‘Greek hay’ (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) in Mediterranean agricultures. Why don’t people like this thing? Is it the smell?
- Crop Wild Relatives as Genetic Resources – the Case of the European Wild Grape. Introgression from American wild species in S. German wild grapes. Still probably valuable for various disease resistances, though.
- Mining new resources for grape resistance against Botryosphaeriaceae: a focus on Vitis vinifera ssp. sylvestris. See what I mean?
- Global mountain topography and the fate of montane species under climate change. Some plants may have more land available to them as they migrate upwards.