Genebanks

January 25, 2010January 25, 2010

Bill Gates on genebanks and their databases

From Bill Gates’ annual letter on the work of his foundation:

There are three things that modern agrotechnology brings to this seed improvement process. The first is simply the ability to gather plant samples from all over the world and use databases to keep track of thousands of plants grown under different conditions.

The second is sequencing and the third is transgenics, in case you were wondering. One of these days, I’d like to take Mr Gates down into Genebank Database Hell. But hey, we’re working on it. And the Foundation is helping.

January 22, 2010January 22, 2010

How old is that lentil?

You may remember yesterday’s nibble about the allegedly 4,000-year-old lentil from an archaeological site in Turkey which actually germinated. Intrigued, I ran the news item by some colleagues at Kew. They pointed me to a New Scientist article from a few years back which describes their attempt to verify a previous alleged example of very old seed (from the sarcophagus of an Egyptian mummy, in fact) germinating. The thing is, you can predict pretty well how seed will behave over time if you know the temperature and relative humidity of the conditions. You just plug those numbers into a fairly well known and understood equation.

Dickie found that if he started with top-quality seed and the temperature remained constant at 16 °C, one grain in a thousand might still germinate after 236 years. With the temperature sometimes hitting the high 20s, the grain would all be dead in 89 years. And if the seed was less than perfect to begin with…

So let’s just say I’ll be personally needing some fairly solid evidence for the age of that lentil.

January 22, 2010January 23, 2010

Genebank manager in the spotlight

Daniel Debouck, genebank manager at CIAT in Colombia, is featured in the next issue of Bioversity’s Geneflow magazine. Daniel is a world expert on beans. And an esteemed colleague.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciat/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

January 22, 2010January 22, 2010

Nibbles: Tomatoes, Fattipuffs, Thinifers, Rice, Policy, IFAP, Small oats, Yams, Drought insurance, Siberian nomads, Cereal miscegenation, Fiji breadfruit, Introgression, Mudchute, Gordon Edgar, Coconuts, Eels, Cat worship, Biofuel breeding, Perennials

Some heirloom tomatoes resist late blight, others not so much.
Overweight or obese Americans at 68%, and holding steady. No epidemic, say free-thinkers.
“No wonder kids are gaining weight.” But they aren’t, see above. (Where’s that sarc-mark when you need it?)
Hydroelectric scheme to save Ifugao rice terraces, cut carbon emissions. W-w-w?
Climate Change and Agrobiodiversity updates us on hot policy news. Thanks.
IFAP updates its farmers on agricultural biodiversity. Thanks again.
Small oats genebank evaluations make big progress with young crofters.
Yam festivities in the Philippines.
Psst, you want drought insurance for your camel herd? Oh, and Jeremy wants to know why this IFPRI stuff didn’t find its way into the story.
“The ability to roam freely enables people and animals to exploit or avoid a wide range of natural and manmade habitats.” Still no cure for cancer.
Barley helps wheat. But how, exactly? I think we should be told.
Fiji sets up breadfruit genebank Which will hopefully help local agricultural entrepreneurs.
Anastasia on introgression. At length.
The biggest urban farm in Europe.
A bite of Cheese(monger).
Coconuts bad for birds bad for soil bad for plants bad for crabs. Ok then, let’s cut the damn things down, shall we?
Cockney cuisine takes a turn for the worse. Well would you Adam and Eve it?
Egyptian cat temple pix. Miaow.
“…the first biofuel crop breeding programs for low-input systems are likely to accelerate progress by focusing on grass–legume bicultures.”
And another from the Land Institute: “…harvested perennial
grasslands provide valuable ecological benchmarks for agricultural sustainability.”

January 20, 2010January 20, 2010

Helping Haiti

Difficult to say anything new about what’s going on in Haiti. It is all sad beyond belief. WWF is rightly encouraging people to give. Seconded. UNEP has announced an environmental recovery effort. There’s no shortage of advice on what must be done. FAO is trying to raise money to support food production in fields and homegardens. The planting season starts in March, so time is short. Meanwhile, CABI’s blog looked at the underlying food security problems.

I haven’t come across any information on what’s happened to the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation Agricole (MARNDR), but I don’t hold out much hope. It housed the national germplasm collection of 513 beans and 54 maize accessions. SINGER lists 233 accessions from Haiti, almost all rice (48), beans (113) and maize (67). GRIN lists 111 (almost all rice, maize, cotton, beans). ((Thanks to Colin for descending into Genebank Database Hell.)) At first sight it seems that maybe most of the stuff that is in MARNDR should be findable elsewhere, though that’s quite a lot of beans.

LATER: IFPRI DG has his say too.