- Banana germplasm gets around.
- Kenyan urban cows get around. Not local breeds, though…
- Can agriculture deliver both resilience and nutrition? FAO thinks so.
- Yeah, about that: we’re gonna need better data.
- Participatory varietal selection in Nepal. Not as novel as made out here, surely.
- Brazil nut gets it all.
- Today’s beer story comes from India.
- Sorting the sheep from the goats, the molecular way.
Nibbles: De Schutter, Madagascar beans, Beer!, Cocktails!, CIAT strategy, Segenet, FGR, Risotto again, Domestication, Quinoa, Medieval workplan, Late blight
- “Productivism” skewered one last time. Until the next time.
- The Malagasy Bean Renaissance. No, really.
- The science of beer foam. Now there’s no excuse.
- Cocktails can be biodiverse too. You bet they can.
- CIAT’s new strategy makes a splash. Genebank front and centre.
- New ICIPE director tells all. She used to work at CIAT, did you know?
- First edition of The State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources is out. Now to do something about it.
- Italy’s traditional rices preserved. Yes, Italy’s, you heard me.
- Agriculture was invented in the current interglacial. Why then, and not in the Eemian?
- Quinoa macronutrients exzzzzzzzamined.
- Your what-to-do-now guide to the medieval farm. Progress? Not what it’s cracked up to be.
- People of the Toluca valley! Expect researchers looking for wild potato genes resistant to late blight.
The future of genebanks unfolds, a bit
The potential benefits of recent developments in DNA sequencing technologies to both collection management and use will also be explored during the course of the project.
That was from an article a couple of days ago on the future of the UK’s vegetables genebank. Well, we learned yesterday that for rice, at least, that brave new world is almost at hand:
…access to 3,000 genomes of rice sequence data will tremendously accelerate the ability of breeding programs to overcome key hurdles mankind faces in the near future.
That would be DNA sequences from 2,466 of the International Rice Genebank Collection’s (IRRI) accessions, plus 534 accessions housed at the CAAS genebank, amounting to 13.4 terabytes of data. This begins the long road to sequencing the whole IRRI collection of about 100,000 accessions, the rationale for which was recently set out:
In this paper, we will discuss how genotyping and sequencing can be integrated into the activities of a modern gene bank to revolutionize the way scientists document the genetic identity of their accessions; track seed lots, varieties, and alleles; identify duplicates; and rationalize active collections, and how the availability of genomics data are likely to motivate innovative collaborations with the larger research and breeding communities to engage in systematic and rigorous phenotyping and multilocation evaluation of the genetic resources in gene banks around the world. The objective is to understand and eventually predict how variation at the DNA level helps determine the phenotypic potential of an individual or population. Leadership and vision are needed to coordinate the characterization of collections and to integrate genotypic and phenotypic information in ways that will illuminate the value of these resources. Genotyping of collections represents a powerful starting point that will enable gene banks to become more effective as stewards of crop biodiversity.
Alas, the news came a few days too late for the Pahiyas Festival:
Clearly, rice is the main inspiration of this delightful affair. The rice grains, rice plants and rice seedlings on display may all seem the same, but a closer look will reveal that they are not. Some seeds are longer, some are rounder and some are lighter in color than others, reminding us of just how rich and diverse our rice varieties are.
Maybe next year.
Meanwhile, if you want to celebrate instead by cracking open a nice bottle of wine from the Quinta do Crasto estate in Portugal, well, they’re using high-resolution genotyping there as well to figure out just exactly what clones they have in their fields. What’s that you say? You don’t drink wine? How about a nice bar of quality heirloom chocolate, also thoroughly genotyped, then? Truly the future is upon us.
Nibbles: Wheat database, Livestock maps, Indian apple genebank, UC Davis strawberries, Cheese fungi postdoc, Fruit domestication, Brassica genome, Early hunting dogs, Threatened species numbers, Bolivia conservation
- A Wheat Germplasm Database To Rule Them All. No, not from CGIAR.
- New livestock maps of the world. Yes, from CGIAR.
- Kashmir ponders an apple genebank.
- More from Game of Strawberries.
- Wanna study the population genomics of cheese fungi? Course you do.
- Domesticating local fruit trees good for nutrition, but need secure tenure and good planting material.
- Building better broccoli, the genome way.
- Early domesticated dogs helped in mammoth hunts.
- Current extinction rate about 1000 times higher than background. Databases can help with that, believe it or not.
- Building a national PGRFA system in Bolivia. When will they ratify the ITPGRFA, though?
Wellesbourne set for the next 5 years
If there was ever any doubt about the future of the UK’s vegetables genebank at Wellesbourne, this should settle it:
Warwick Crop Centre at the University of Warwick has won a five year contract from Defra to continue to host the UK Vegetable Genebank at the University’s Wellesbourne Campus.
Good news, as far as it goes, but I have my doubts about the idea of such short-term contracts for genebanks. I mean, it’s certainly good practice to keep an institution on its toes with regular reviews of performance and the like, but what exactly is going to happen if Warwick Crop Centre does not win the contract again in 2019? Will the whole thing be moved to another locality, lock, stock and cold room? And on what basis will that future decision be made anyway? Are there some performance targets that the genebank will need to meet?