Genebanks

December 2, 2014November 28, 2014

Irish eyes smiling about apple conservation

FullSizeRender Our office complimentary copy of Michael Hennerty’s The Heritage Apples Of Ireland has arrived, and it’s a real beauty. We somehow missed the announcement of its publication back in the summer.

The book is written by Dr. Michael Hennerty, who for many years was Head of the Department of Horticulture in University College Dublin, and provides detailed genetic information of 68 different varieties of indigenous Irish apples using high resolution photographs. The descriptors used in the book utilise the current internationally recognised descriptor system and a key is also included to facilitate the identification of historical Irish cultivars by non-experts.

I particularly like the section on “finders and keepers”, people who have been involved in the conservation of Irish apples over the years. People like John George Dalkeith Lamb, who…

…collected old apples from 1945 to 1949 and established the UCD collection. Prof. E.J. Clarke maintained the collection until it was destroyed in 1970. Repatriated in 1996. Now planted at UCD, Belfield, Dublin.

That “repatriated” is intriguing, but I can find no further explanation of it online. Anyone out there know the details?

December 1, 2014November 18, 2014

Brainfood: Daniel Zohary, Blue dates, Crop diversification, Tunisian oases, Cranberry diversity, Drought breeding, Seed-use watermelon, Cattle history, Apple conservation

Daniel Zohary: Geneticist and Explorer of Plant Domestication. Nice profile of iconic explorer of agricultural biodiversity.
The date palm with blue dates Phoenix senegalensis André (Arecaceae): A horticultural enigma is solved. A variety of P. canariensis, as it turns out.
Crop diversification as a smallholder livelihood strategy within semi-arid agricultural systems near Mount Kenya. It will work better at higher elevations.
Change of oases farming systems and their effects on vegetable species diversity: Case of oasian agro-systems of Nefzaoua (South of Tunisia). Not working at all in oases.
Clonal diversity and genetic differentiation revealed by SSR markers in wild Vaccinium macrocarpon and Vaccinium oxycoccos. Cranberries have much more variation than previously thought.
Two decades of InterDrought conferences: are we bridging the genotype-to-phenotype gap? Yes, slowly, but genomics will help. Eventually.
Microsatellite Marker-based Genetic Diversity of Seed-use Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus ssp. vulgaris var. megalaspermus Lin et Chao) Collections. They’re all very similar.
On the History of Cattle Genetic Resources. The loss of breeds adapted to local conditions and extensive management are the main threats to the genetic diversity amassed over the past 12,000 years.
The vulnerability of US apple (Malus) genetic resources. Could be worse. Could be better.

November 28, 2014November 29, 2014

Nibbles: Quasilocavore, Returning potatoes, Singapore veggies, Floating gardens, Timber trees, Allanblackia, Cranberry glut, Wild turkeys

Sure, eat locally. But not too much.
Andean farmers don’t have much of a choice about eating locally, but at least now they have more potato varieties to choose from.
Growing your own is about as local as you can get in Singapore.
Maybe they should do it the Bangladeshi way.
A list of the world’s commercial timber trees (pdf). Can’t help thinking they should have made more of this.
Which doesn’t include Allanblackia.
Let them eat cranberries.
Wild turkey with that?

November 26, 2014November 27, 2014

The ins and outs of safety duplicating germplasm collections

On that issue of collaboration between national programmes and international genebanks, which we alluded to yesterday when we were talking about ICARDA and Morocco, it might be worth highlighting another example. We Nibbled this before, but it can stand a bit more exposure.

The new genebank of Embrapa, which opened in April this year at Cenargen, one of the 46 units of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation in Brasilia, received today (06/11) the first deposit from an international collection of plant genetic resources. This is a backup of [part of] the potato collection from CIP (International Potato Center) in Peru, which has four thousand samples of wild species and cultivated varieties, and is the most diverse and extensive in the world, as the country [together with neighbours] is the genetic cradle of this Andean crop. This first instalment consisted of 180 [in vitro] samples from nine varieties. The next shipment will be sent in February 2015 and by the middle of next year, probably the whole collection will have arrived in Brazil.

That’s a translation from an Embrapa press release, ((Why news of this should be missing from CIP’s own recent pean to safety duplication is beyond me.)) by me via Google Translate. Vegetatively propagated (or clonal) crops such as potato and cassava, which are conserved in the field and in tissue culture, require a bit more effort for safety duplication compared to seed crops. See, for example, what’s going on with bananas. It’s great to see CIP and Embrapa coming together in this way. Maybe Embrapa could also eventually safety duplicate in reciprocal fashion its own collections in the international centres. Its cassava clonal collection is very important, for example, and not safety duplicated. Look at Table 3 on page 21 of the global cassava conservation strategy (pdf), and then read the discussion on page 41:

Column 14 [of Table 3] indicates the importance of introducing national program accessions that are not yet represented in the international centers, for safety duplication (see also later sections). These low, medium and high priorities are based on number of in situ or ex situ materials not yet at CIAT or IITA, and the relative importance of that country’s cassava genetic diversity. Critical countries for further representation in the international centers are: Brazil, Peru, Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, D.R. Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, along with several other countries of medium urgency.

Some seeds from Embrapa are already in Svalbard. But there’s no Svalbard for clonal collections, alas.

November 26, 2014November 26, 2014

Nibbles: Hunger Games, Nutritious markets, Plant secrets, Nutrition soundbites, Buckwheat panic, Olive oil panic, Cannabis breeding, Wild turkey genetics, Quinoa wars, Domestication infographics, Howard-Yana Shapiro

Do they know it’s Christmas? Stocking-filling books for do-gooders.
Wonder if any of them talk about using markets to deliver nutritious food.
The surprising secrets of baobabs, among other plants. I thought we knew all there was to know about baobabs, what with all those factsheets.
The Global Nutrition Report in 12 sound-bites. No sign of baobabs.
Russians in a tizzy about their buckwheat. If only they’d had a factsheet.
Everybody in a tizzy about European olive oil. Maybe they should try the American stuff?
“When skunk was created the people doing it had no idea they were altering the ratios of CBD and THC — they just kept breeding the plants that gave the strongest high and threw the rest away.” Ouch. But fear not, help is at hand.
Restoring wild turkey populations is screwing up its subspecific structure, pissing off taxonomists no end.
Bolivians do not appreciate cheap Peruvian quinoa. Hipsters unavailable for comment.
No, LA’s wild quinoa is not going to put too much of a dent in global food shortages, nor interest many hipsters, but it’s a fun story. Too bad wasn’t mashed up with the US crop wild relatives prize-winning paper.
Cool crop domestication infographics.
Plant geneticists are from Mars.