- Secretary of Agriculture tours Ft Collins genebank. With video goodness.
- Which genebank I’m sure follows the Genebank Standards for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. With video goodness.
- Prince of Wales sows organic rice. In white suit. With video goodness.
- The story of indigo. No video, but lots of photos.
- Sardinian blood soup. No video, but one photo. Which is more than enough.
- Wanna watch Seeds of Time? Here’s where. Includes much on Svalbard, of course. And a bit on USDA wild potato collecting. I plead the fifth.
- So there’s a second banana genome? Thankfully no video.
- “We are only using the tip of the iceberg.” Rice genetic resources, that is. Could easily have had a video.
- Face palm oil.
- Photo essay on the bazaars of Central Asia.
‘Dead Souls’ in genebanks?
We have received this contribution from Theo van Hintum and Liesbeth de Groot of the Centre for Genetic Resources, The Netherlands (CGN). We very much welcome such submissions. Many thanks to Theo and Liesbeth.
CGN strives to promote the use of its plant genebank collections by collaborating with private breeding companies in the search for useful traits. It usually selects material, preferably from its own collection, and organises evaluation trials in consultation with, and funded by, these companies. In this context, CGN recently searched for additional material of a wild leek (Allium ampeloprasum), the most important member of the primary genepool of leek, in order to identify resistance against two fungal diseases, as well as insect tolerance. CGN only has nine accessions of this species, and for the evaluation we aimed at about twenty.
The search in EURISCO for A. ampeloprasum germplasm resulted in a list of 52 accessions from 7 genebanks, and GRIN showed an additional 12 accessions from the USDA network. Most of the accessions of the USDA network came up as unavailable in GRIN; only 2 out of the 12 were available for distribution. In Europe, availability was even worse. The five collections holding more than two accessions were approached. Apart from the nine accessions from CGN itself, the other four collections, holding 40 accessions in total, could effectively provide CGN with only one accession. One collection did not respond to the email request despite repeated attempts, the others informed us that, due to the difficulty in regeneration of this species, no seed was available for distribution, one accession excepted.
The bottom line is that, apart from its own collection, from 52 reported and requested accessions in EURISCO and GRIN, only three were available for distribution. What does this mean for the overall availability of plant genetic resources from national collections. Are we maintaining a database of ‘Dead Souls’?
Nibbles: Soil testing kit, Sustainable farming, Coffee and climate change, BGI genebank, Bamboo genebank, Genebank management, India’s malnutrition, Phenotyping conference, CIP genebank video, CG impact, Feed the World
Luigi went on a three-week trip, and all he came back with was this:
- A new soil testing kit? Really?
- Ok, how about a SciDev Spotlight featurette on sustainable farming? No? Well, can I tempt you with the British Ecological Society on agroecology then?
- Oh, I bet this thing on coffee and climate change will hit home.
- I’m pretty sure news of yet another Chinese genebank (of sorts) won’t.
- Pssst. Got room for a new bamboo genebank too?
- They’ll need a genebank management system, won’t they? GRIN and bear it.
- News too of hunger and malnutrition in India, by Indians, for … er …
- Phenotyping conference, anyone? Anyone at all? Some EU breeders will no doubt be there. And some of them at least will find a new map of water risk useful in their work.
- And to end with, Al Jazeera on the CIP potato genebank. You heard me.
- As you were, there’s the CGIAR Knowledge Day too, all about delivery and impact. I wonder if the genebanks will feature…
- Not so fast, there’s also a live webcast of the conference Feeding the World without Consuming the Planet that awaits you.
Brainfood: Pollinator communities, Supply chains and deforestation, Restoration in cities and connected landscapes, Forages in China, Forages in Australia, Indian eggplant minerals, Mediterranean eggplant, Carpathian agrotourism, Nordic apples, Hungarian grape, Saline SP
- Landscape heterogeneity and farming practice alter the species composition and taxonomic breadth of pollinator communities. Pollinator species richness decreases along with landscape heterogeneity, but different taxonomic groups do different things, so you have to consider composition.
- Enhancing the sustainability of commodity supply chains in tropical forest and agricultural landscapes. You got your institutions, policies, incentives, information and technologies, and now you’ve got a framework to work out how they can combine to produce the desired outcome of less deforestation from the production of agricultural commodities like beef, cocoa, palm oil, rubber and soybean. That’s the theory done, now on with the practice. Which basically comes down to governance.
- Urban Grassland Restoration: A Neglected Opportunity for Biodiversity Conservation. Beyond green roofs. Rooves?
- A Framework to Optimize Biodiversity Restoration Efforts Based on Habitat Amount and Landscape Connectivity. I guess we should apply this to the above? It’s the lack of connectivity that’s gonna kill ya in those urban landscapes.
- Research Progress of Forage Germplasm Resources Innovation in China. Among other things, that progress came with “ion beam implantation” and “spaceship-carried”, which really makes me want to read beyond the abstract, which however would require knowledge of Chinese. If there’s anyone out there who can explain the spaceship, I’d be thrilled.
- Pasture legumes in Queensland: a new wave? Maybe, but if so very much on the cheap. No spaceships in Oz.
- Mineral composition and their genetic variability analysis in eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) germplasm. 2 out of 32 Indian genebank accessions were good for wide range of minerals.
- The Population Structure and Diversity of Eggplant from Asia and the Mediterranean Basin. An eastern and a western genepool according to SSRs, and 3 parallel morphological groups in each of these. No word on their mineral content.
- Green economy and agri-rural tourism. Marketing local eco-bio-products are the way forward for the Carpathians. Would pay money to see that.
- Genetic diversity in Swedish and Finnish heirloom apple cultivars revealed with SSR markers. The Finnish ones are weird.
- Morphological and molecular characterization of varieties and selected clones of ‘Kadarka’ grape. Formerly the widest grown red wine cultivar in Hungary, and a total nomenclatural mess.
- Using salt-tolerant sweet potato varieties in Than Hoa Province, Vietnam. Ok, maybe not peer-reviewed, but interesting as hell. From 530 genebank accessions to 2 promising cultivars, via lab and field trials.
Seed Savers (online) Exchange
Having given pickacarrot.com a brief Nibble, I feel duty bound to report at greater length on the new online exchange of Seed Savers Exchange. The arrival of the SSE Yearbook, with its hundreds of pages of densely printed listings, heralds, for many, a winter of wondering, speculating, dreaming and, occasionally, frustration. It lists all the varieties offered by members of SSE, from whom you request seed directly. If you are after lots of different seeds, from lots of different members, that means lots of different requests.
The online exchange, while probably not as comfortable to curl up with in front of a fire (I haven’t tried it on a tablet computer) is equally enticing and a lot easier to use. At least, I think it is. In the old days, you actually had to write to someone asking for seed, and if you were doing so from outside the US, as I was, you had to find International Reply Coupons and all that stuff. The online exchange has a wishlist to which you can add your requests, so to test it I thought I’d look for Cherokee Purple, a tomato I’ve grown successfully in the past and that might amuse my Italian neighbours.
I found it easily enough, and then had to choose a member to ask for it. I decided on Neil Lockhart, in Illinois, for no good reason. Then I pressed the button to complete my order, and nothing happened. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to pay the $3 handling fee (plus, I hope, a little more to account for additional postage to me), or what happens next. Perhaps that’s because the online exchange is still in beta test. Perhaps nothing is supposed to happen. Of course, had I read all the details in advance, I would have learned that the online exchange is actually just streamlining the process of requesting seeds, by sending an automatic email from me to Neil. Now it is up to us mutually to sort out delivery and payment. It also streamlines the whole business of listing seeds members may have to offer, which is probably going to be very helpful too.
All in all, SSE’s online exchange has, I think, enormous potential. One of the most interesting and diverting aspects is the Seed Stories, which give a glimpse into the personal histories behind some of the varieties, and to which SSE is adding all the time. The online exchange has some glitches still to be ironed out, and I’m sure they will be. There might even be ways in which it could be improved but that would take inordinate amounts of human time. For now, though, especially if you are in the US, it seems like a wonderful gateway to a wealth of agricultural biodiversity.
Of course, you do have to be a member of SSE, but that’s no bad thing.