Another feel-good genebank story. Eric Vercoe, now 85, grew rice in the 60s in TePuke near Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty in the North Island of New Zealand. Alas, the project eventually came to a stop because of flooding problems, but there has been some interest recently in re-establishing the crop, using more modern technology, but the same variety. Called TePuke (gold), this had been developed in the area over 12 years from an original introduction from Japan. It grew very well, had good cooking quality and very good taste. Unfortunately, it was no longer anywhere to be found in New Zealand. So Mr Vercoe asked the IRRI genebank, where it turned out that a deposit of the variety had been made in 1965. He received seeds last summer, and rice is again being grown in the most southerly location for the crop that our friends at IRRI know of.
Stripe rust collection makes a move
Yes, fungi have genebanks too.
Blogging Niu Afa
Dr Roland Bourdeix is a senior researcher at CIRAD and an honorary research fellow at Bioversity International. He’s long worked on coconut genetic resources conservation and use, including at the Marc Delorme Research Station. He’s now in the South Pacific on a mission — in collaboration with my old pals at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community — to collect a famous Samoan coconut variety, and you can follow his progress on his new blog.
Nibbles: Drugs, Chains, Data, Year, Svalbard, Twitter, Laurel
- Opium gene decoded. Is that good?
- ILRI shares a bunch of presentations on value chains. Can’t be bad.
- Missouri Botanical Garden opens Center for Biodiversity Informatics. Will any good come of it?
- Agri scientists promote 2010 as biodiversity year. But that should have read Bioversity International. Bad.
- Wild edibles could hold key to protecting food supply? They mean wild relatives, of course. Very bad.
- More on our Twitter feed. You following us, right? Good!
- Beware the Ides of March! Laurel wreath bad for some.
Nibbles: Seeds, Genebanks, Backed up, Seed banks, Pollinators
- Molecular approaches to seed quality.
- CIAT answers the perennial question: how is Svalbard like a hard disk?
- Speaking of which, Svalbard is now the “world’s most diverse collection of crop diversity“. Er …?
- But … “Despite the rapid progress, Fowler said the bank still has significant holes in its collection“.
- Survival Seed Bank smackdown!
- Global pollinator declines: a review of a review.