Category: Genebanks

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Severe, grave and philosophical

That, we are told by the BBC’s Material World presenter Quentin Cooper, is what Jonathan Swift thought coffee makes us. And I for one would agree with Mr Cooper that it is indeed also how Dr Aaron Davis, Head of Coffee Research at Kew Gardens, and global crop wild relative expert Dr Nigel Maxted, from the University of Birmingham, came over in an interview with him yesterday. It’s all because of that Kew study on the effects of climate change on wild arabica, which is really making the rounds, not least thanks to the BBC. You can download the whole podcast, but we’ve taken the liberty of filleting out the 10 minutes of the programme which feature Drs Davis and Maxted, with many thanks to the BBC. More background on crop wild relatives in Europe from the PGR Secure and the older PGR Forum project website. IUCN has a Red List. There’s a Global Portal. And a big global project on crop wild relatives too. Who says these things are not getting enough attention?

Listen to that key segment.

Read that paper on Arachis, Vigna and Solanum Nigel alluded to.

And dream about attending that FAO workshop he mentioned for next week.

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Where is wasabi?

That Nibble yesterday about the BEGIN Japanology TV programme on roots and tubers led to some more digging around, as it were, and eventually I unearthed this gem on wasabi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qq30ya3ui4

Which reminded me that one of my early posts on this blog was about Wasabia japonica. What’s strange about that old post 1 is that six years on I can’t imagine writing something like that without including a link to a WIEWS report on how many genebank accessions there are of the crop around the world. And I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing. Anyway, two, as is happens, and not where you’d think. There. I feel better now.

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Polymotu in practice

On the small islands of the Pacific, it is proposed for the planting of only three coconut varieties: a ‘green tall’ such as niu afa, ‘Malayan red dwarf’, and ‘Tahiti red dwarf’. Subsequently, six new varieties will be produced from this mix without any costly controlled pollination programme. And, farmers will have a diversity of coconut varieties to choose from. It is important to spend time with the people living on the islands to identify existing varieties and to progressively remove existing coconuts once the new palms begin to bear. This is a collective decision that village authorities need to agree on. The long-term benefits are continued biodiversity.

You may remember that from a piece from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community that I think we may have Nibbled, or worse, a couple of years back. Anyway, if that’s the theory, here’s the practice:

“We are not making a coconut plantation, we are landscaping an island, so the important thing is to make it pretty.”

That’s Dr Roland Bourdeix, starting about 4:20 mins in. 2 It’s his idea to plant small Pacific islands to just one or two coconut varieties, rather than bringing lots of different varieties together in a genebank. In what he calls the Polymotu Approach to coconut conservation, you let the coconuts themselves — and isolation — do the hard work of controlled pollination. The coconut conservationist just gets to travel from isolated island paradise to isolated island paradise, making sure that everything is ok, taking the odd measurement, and packing up coconuts for shipment when someone else somewhere else in the world wants that particular accession. Nice gig if you can get it.