- Celebrating Charles Heiser and Bob Chambers.
- Quinoa coming into its own in Bolivia.
- Earthscan and Bioversity International team up for new Issues in Agricultural Biodiversity book series.
- Crop wild relatives not just useful to breeders, eggplant edition.
- Vitamin D 101 in pictures.
- Improving pitaya.
- Cassava production trends in Africa in 28 slides. Twenty slides too many, but it’s always good to have the data.
- Beetroot’s colour deconstructed.
- Worldwatch’s 2011 State of the World was released yesterday. Gives a “compelling look at the global food crisis, with particular emphasis on global innovations that can help solve a worldwide problem.” At $19.95 a pop. But supporting material available. Here comes the commentary.
- The genebank at the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council gets its 15 minutes of fame.
Millets go back home
You’ll have to take my word for it, unless you read Chinese, or can make head or tail out of the Google translation of the announcement on the Environmental Information E-News website, but it looks like a number of accessions of Setaria millet from the USDA collection have been “repatriated” to some Taiwanese hilltribe communities who had lost them over the years. Me, I’d have asked for stuff from other places too while I was at it, what with climate change and all, but anyway. There will apparently be more on the project on the website of the Department of Agronomy, National Taiwan University, but again you’ll need some language skills to get the full benefit. Prof. Warren H.J. Kuo is the man in charge. The word is that Taiwan’s Public Television Service will upload something in English to youtube very soon. Looking forward to that.
Nibbles: Neanderthal, CWR, Bioinformatics, Svalbard, Old Armenian wine, Maple syrup, Plants databases, Bananas in trouble
- Neanderthals cooked and ate plants, but did not use toothbrushes.
- Andy Jarvis talks up a crop wild relatives storm.
- Towards an information infrastructure for the global genebank system. Maybe.
- Aussies send seeds to wrong Global Seed Vault.
- Oldest winery found in Armenia. Search still ongoing for oldest wino. Maybe in Lebanon?
- Oh, to be at the Bigleaf Maple Syrup Festival!
- The most important thing to happen in botany in, what, a couple of weeks? Ah, but the backlash is here.
- Colbert finally works out why his high school teacher put condoms on bananas. Here’s his informant.
The Crown Jewels of USDA
Nice video on how USDA conserves plant and animal genetic resources at Ft Collins in Colorado. Great job by Dave Ellis and co.
Watch the full episode. See more America’s Heartland.
Genebanks and climate change adaptation
Gary Nabhan has had a letter published in the Christmas edition of The Economist.
SIR – Your otherwise excellent leader on adapting to climate change was marred by the assertion that people should abandon their “prejudice” against genetic engineering in order to secure food supplies (“How to live with climate change”, November 27th). Although it is true that drought-resistant seeds will be needed—as will low-chill fruit trees and root crops—they are not likely to come from genetic engineering. This is because it can cost up to $5m and take up to 15 years of R&D for each new patented biotech cultivar. It is unlikely that genetically engineered organisms can be deployed quickly enough to respond to climate change.
It would be far more cost-effective to support local farmers in their breeding and evaluation of selected varieties already in community seed banks. The diversity of heirloom seeds offers rural communities far more pragmatic options than the Gates Foundation and Monsanto can generate with all their wealth.
Gary Paul Nabhan
Professor, University of Arizona, TucsonCarol Thompson
Professor, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff
I won’t comment on the GMO angle, except to say that Gary’s point is debatable. What I wanted to point out is that it’s not just “community seed banks” that house the seeds of adaptation to climate change. ((As it were.)) National and, in particular, international genebanks will also be important. That’s because the climates experienced by rural communities in the future will increasingly come to resemble those experienced in the past by communities further and further away. Adaptation will lie in other people’s seeds.