- Plants for Europe is (are?) incensed about new EU regulations. Should it/they be?
- Squash is a Native American word, natch. I bet they’re incensed.
- Speaking of Native American crops, here’s a big writeup on the potato, including great pix, and nice shoutout for the CIP genebank.
- If you live in the tropics and want to learn about agroforestry, you could just go out and talk to the first smallholder you meet. Or you could read a textbook.
- A roundtable on whether genetics can help us figure out whether wine is good for you. When they do the large scale clinical trial, as they surely must, I’ll be first in line.
- The breakthroughs of agriculture. Sadly, working out the seed viability equation does not feature. Nor does vegetarianism.
- Breeding does, though. And here’s an example why, featuring soybeans.
- And another from rice: IRRI bags another silver bullet gene.
- And we’ll soon have those in cotton too.
- Which is all fully recognized in the latest WRI report on how to feed the world.
- Though not in this other mega-report on Brazil, at least not quite so explicitly.
- “We need more research” is the wrong answer. Even when it’s breeding?
A genebank gets a slap on the back
I have to say that IPK’s an incredibly important resource for plant breeders. Without gene banks like Gatersleben we’d have lost so much more of our crop diversity. They deserve wider recognition for the work they do.
Oh wow. Unsolicited praise for a genebank. Whatever next. It comes from Graham. D. Jenkins-Belohorska, on the Facebook group Plant Breeding for Permaculture. With all due respect, I suspect its audience is limited. So I’m reproducing the whole exchange here. I really hope they won’t mind. It gets more specific, so it’s worth reading in full. Click on the image to enbiggen, and squint. Just in case this link doesn’t work. And kudos to IPK.
But do you have a genebank you’d like to thank (or complain about, what the hell)? Let us know here.
Brainfood: Latvian tomato heirlooms, Sinai desert gardens, Orange silkworms, Indian pony breeds, Korean radishes, Anthophagy, Hybrids and diversification, Oregano oils, Chinese peanuts, Ethiopian sorghum, Wild rice crosses
- Latvia’s Tomato Rebellion: Nested Environmental Justice and Returning Eco-Sociality in the Post-Socialist Eu Countryside. The Man tries to enforce the European Common Catalogue, Latvians rebel.
- Traditional agricultural gardens conserve wild plants and functional richness in arid South Sinai. Wild plants survive in gardens, which thus combine diversity and utility.
- Analysis of a silkworm F1 hybrid with yellow cocoon generated by crossing two white-cocoon strains: Further evidences for the roles of Cameo2 and CBP in formation of yellow cocoon. What, are we expected to eat this thing now, what with its high carotenoid content and all?
- Genetic diversity and bottleneck studies in endangered Bhutia and Manipuri pony breeds. Bottleneck? What bottleneck?
- Analysis of the genetic diversity of radish germplasm through SSR markers derived from Chinese cabbage. New Korean radish varieties not same as old Korean radish varieties.
- Ethnobotanical study of anthophagy culture in mountainous area of Wenzhou. It pays to eat flowers.
- Enabling adaptation? Lessons from the new ‘Green Revolution’ in Malawi and Kenya. Adopting hybrids, and thereby escaping the “low maize productivity trap” is no guarantee that your thoughts will turn to crop diversification.
- Phytomorphological and Essential-Oil Characterization in situ and ex situ of Wild Biotypes of Oregano Collected in the Campania Region (Southern Italy). Both nature and nurture play a role. Look for high glandular and stomatal density.
- Diversity characterization and association analysis of agronomic traits in a Chinese peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) mini-core collection. Can it really be down to just 15 alleles?
- Assessment of molecular diversity and population structure of the Ethiopian sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] germplasm collection maintained by the USDA–ARS National Plant Germplasm System using SSR markers. High diversity, no structure, much duplication, little passport data.
- Crossability patterns within and among Oryza series Sativae species from Asia and Australia. Some easy, some difficult, all interesting.
Outsourcing rice germplasm collecting
One of the highlights of my recent trip to India was receiving a copy of the booklet “M.S. Swaminathan in Conversation with Nitya Rao” from the great man himself. Sure, you can of course download the thing in PDF. But my copy is signed :)
Anyway, there’s lots of interesting stuff in there about Prof. Swaminathan’s life and career, a career that included a number of very high level positions in agricultural research and development in India (which earned him the title of “Father of the Green Revolution in India,” among other things), but also a very successful stint as director general of IRRI. Given Prof. Swaminathan’s lifelong interest in genetic resources conservation, it came as no surprise to see the IRRI genebank mentioned a number of times.
What was surprising, at least to me, were the somewhat unconventional methods that were sometimes used to make sure that endangered diversity did in fact reach the genebank. Here’s a snippet, you can find more on page 53.
Burma, now Myanmar, has a lot of germplasm, similar to what we have in our North East. However, this was not collected because these were very disturbed areas. When I went to Myanmar from IRRI, I told General Yu Gong that he should give some protection to our collectors. ‘Why Swaminathan, why do you want to send your people? You train my soldiers on how to collect and what to collect, and they will do this for you’. We made a very good programme, I was there for the first two days. T. T. Chang ran the programme, explaining to the generals and the soldiers how to collect what we call ‘passport data’ about the plant. They collected about 9,000 varieties. I must give credit to General Yu Gong for opening my eyes to this potential.
I have in the past mused about decentralized approaches to collecting for ex situ conservation (see, for example, slide 19 in these training materials on germplasm collecting methods and strategies), but I have to admit that using the military never even occurred to me.
Nibbles: ICRISAT award, SIRGEALC awards, Food etymology, Black carrot, Bolivian potatoes, NASA weirdness, Mexican maize, Rice 2.0, Vaccinium
- Dr Upadhyaya Goes to Tampa.
- SIRGEALC participants get prizes too. Maybe one of them can tell us about it.
- First uses of various food words.
- Punjab Black Beauty set to take the carrot world by storm.
- Bolivia conserves its potato relatives. When will it ratify the ITPGRFA and share the love?
- NASA going to grow plants on the Moon. What could possibly go wrong.
- Free trade apparently threatens maize and Mexican culture. I personally think both can take it. They’ve been going for a while.
- You know, I just have no idea what this silly piece about rice in Africa is trying to tell me. Maybe you can figure it out and let me know.
- Celebrating the cranberry.