Genebanks

February 7, 2010February 7, 2010

Specializing on salinity in Abu Dhabi

Is the future of genebanks the sort of trait or adaptation specialization exemplified by the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture in the UAE? Makes more sense than having national genebanks, doesn’t it?

February 3, 2010February 3, 2010

Nibbles: Amman, Banana disease, Survey, Qatar, Wetlands

MSM on Amman meeting; eat Luigi’s dust.
Black sigatoka disease confirmed on St Lucia; eats banana plantations.
“Eggs come from sheep” kids survey surprise shock; eat anything.
Qatar builds a genebank.
On World Wetlands Day, Lake Chad protected and British farmland flooded. Will some crop wild relatives benefit?

February 3, 2010February 2, 2010

It’s easy to follow Vavilov

Have we mentioned that the great NI Vavilov has started to tweet?

February 2, 2010February 2, 2010

Nibbles: Amman again, DNA hype, Blight-resistant spuds, Seeds, Sorghum, Brassicas, UK Food Security

Crop Genebank’s Knowledge Base enjoys an outing in Amman.
Great Headlines of our Time: Researchers fight world hunger by mapping the soybean genome.
Blight-resistant potatoes from Hungary to the UK.
Danish Seed Savers 2010 list available.
“We want to make sorghum to be even better than maize,” says Kenyan gene jockey. Why?
“The dog is the brassica of the vertebrate world.” Jeremy says: “Never met one I didn’t like … cooked right.”
James sprouts off on brassicas too.
New UK approach to food security: apples.

February 1, 2010February 1, 2010

Day 1 at the Amman drylands conference draws to a close

The afternoon plenary (see here for the morning) consisted of talks by Drs Adel El Beltagy (GFAR) and Mark Rosegrant (IFPRI). Again, here’s what struck me particularly out of the many interesting things they said.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault provides a Noah’s Ark for the world’s crop germplasm collections, which we’ll need for both adaptation and mitigation.

Transboundary livestock diseases will increase, but there are opportunities for mitigation through better livestock genetics, feeding and management.

Agro-ecosystems will be disrupted by climate change, and we don’t have the methods to predict what the new ones will look like, or whether they will be able to function.

Nanotech can be used not just in a bunch of molecular genetics applications, but also for smarter delivery or inputs.

It’s not just climate change: there’s a host of both demand and supply drivers behind the bad stuff that’s happening to food security.

Biophysical models predict following changes in global production: irrigated rice -27% (but N. China a winner); rainfed rice -13%; irrigated maize -13% (it will reach the Canadian border!); irrigated maize -16% (N. China a winner again); irrigated wheat -42% (disaster in India); rainfed wheat -28% (India again in trouble).

Add economic models to that and you have a predicted doubling of prices by 2050, a 22% drop in calorie consumption in developing countries and a 21% increase in child malnutrition in developing countries.

To fix this, via expansion of irrigation, better roads and more research, will cost an extra $7 billion a year, on top of the current $12 billion being spent on those things now.

Increased productivity is fundamental, sure, but let’s not forget rural infrastructure.

There may well be a potential $150 billion a year up for grabs for agriculture if a decent C trading system develops. But will need low-cost monitoring and verification, and innovative payment schemes.

We’re going to need better local scenarios, but the danger of that is that you begin to not see the wood for the trees (too much weather, not enough climate).