Genebanks

June 20, 2011June 20, 2011

Collecting to restore

We blogged recently about the huge fire in Arizona and what it may be doing to crop wild relatives. In southern California, however, they’re doing something more than just wringing their hands with worry. They’re going out and collecting seeds, that could later be used for restoration, as part of a project called Seeds of Success.

Once back at Rancho Santa Ana, the team dries the seeds in their paper bags, boxes them up and sends them to the national Bend Seed Extractory in Bend, Ore. There they are sorted and X-rayed to see whether they are viable, and then scientists go to work trying to find out how to get them to germinate.
…
Part of each seed lot is stored at the U.S. National Seed Bank as an insurance policy against future threats such as climate change, and some go to native plant researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The trove also is shared with the Kew Millennium Seed Bank operated by the Royal Botanic Garden in England, which aims to save 25 percent of the world’s plant species by 2020.

In some mountain areas, they’ll really have to hurry.

June 18, 2011

Nibbles: Deforestation, Adaptation

Poverty doesn’t drive deforestation. Discuss using examples from Kenya and China.
Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) position statement on “Crop Adaptation to Climate Change.” Genebanks mentioned. Crop wild relatives mentioned. Information systems mentioned. One’s cup runneth over.

June 16, 2011June 16, 2011

National Geographic does genebanks

This is the beguiling paradox of seeds. They are, for all their obvious significance, so readily dismissible, especially by those of us in the well-fed world, who have forgotten where our food even comes from.

Let us hope this National Geographic article helps to change things.

June 13, 2011June 13, 2011

Brainfood: Bean diversity, Rice domestication, Microbial interactions squared, Threat of extinction, Agroforestry, Species diversity

Population structure and genetic differentiation among the USDA common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) core collection. Subpopulations detected within usual Middle American and Andean genepools. The former was more diverse. Diversity was lower for domestication loci. One wonders whether game worth candle.
Artificial selection for a green revolution gene during japonica rice domestication. There’s nothing new under the sun. Fuller fills us in.
Positive plant microbial interactions in perennial ryegrass dairy pasture systems. Plant-microbe interactions can have significant positive impact on production of, and chemical inputs into and losses from, perennial ryegrass dairy pasture systems. Gotta love that agrobiodiversity.
Plant growth promoting potential of Pontibacter niistensis in cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.). And another one. New bacterium from Western Ghats fertilizes soil and helps cowpea to grow.
Extinction risk and diversification are linked in a plant biodiversity hotspot. That would the Cape. Extinction threat (IUCN categories) is better explained by phylogeny than by human activity or plant traits. Go figure.
The framework tree species approach to conserve medicinal trees in Uganda. Sort of like artificial keystone species. Lots of other cool stuff in the same issue of Agroforestry Systems.
Use of topographic variability for assessing plant diversity in agricultural landscapes. By and large, more environmental variability means more plant diversity, in Switzerland. Maybe some crop wild relatives in there?

June 9, 2011June 20, 2011

More on visualizing collecting localities

Clearly short of something to say after the almighty media circus generated by the climate change hotspots publication, our friend Andy Jarvis is reduced to celebrating an embarassingly artificial milestone on the DAPA blog today. Normally I would treat such awkward space filling with the contempt it deserves, but today I’m in the mood to, well, fill space. So here goes.

Andy’s post is about the 90m-resolution digital elevation dataset he and his colleagues have been working on for ages. The milestone he trumpets is 750,000 visitors, but more important is the fact that the data is now visible in Google Earth, which I didn’t know. Here’s what a bit of Spain looks like with the normal Google Earth imagery, the records on show being from Genesys. ((BTW, thanks to Google for the Google Earth license.))

And this is what the same area looks like using the SRTM data:

Advantages to both, I suppose, from a purely aesthetic point of view.

Incidentally, some further playing around with Google Earth revealed a couple of collecting localities for Beta maritima (from GBIF this time) that are easily visible in Street View. Here’s an example, featuring a record from France’s Inventaire national du Patrimoine naturel (INPN), catalogue number INPN_21204166 in case you’re interested. ((Their website is worth exploring. If you do, you’ll find out, among other things, that Beta maritima, is found near the sea significantly more frequently than the average French plant. Unfortunately, the nifty plots and maps are not easily downloadable.))