Must remember to ask if they have any of this.
More on the rescuing of Pawnee corn
Tom Hoegemeyer very kindly replied to my query about rescuing Pawnee corn, and agreed to have his email published here. Thanks, Tom, and very best wishes with your work with the Pawnee.
I was out at the Pawnee homecoming and have been attempting to help them grow some of their old varieties (some had been in storage in homes for years and has low germination and vigor). We have been successful with some varieties, but others appear to be dead. I have also visited with several of the Pawnee “corn keepers” concerning the varieties, their culture and history. Some of the Pawnee varieties may be listed under other names as well—the Arikara are blood relatives, having separated from the Pawnee, moved north and settled on the Elkhorn and Missouri Rivers. Also, their history of inter-tribal warfare lead to the “theft” of some of their varieties by other neighboring tribes—Oto-Missouria , several Sioux groups, and Omaha in particular. I would not be surprised if the same, or nearly so, varieties may have been collected from other areas. One way to test this would be by DNA, as I have been given samples of a couple of varieties we have had no luck in growing, even with seed treatment, surface sterilization, ATP supplementation, embryo rescue, etc.
Some history as to why I am involved: One of my technicians has an uncle who is a photographer and writer for “Nebraskaland” magazine, and he asked his nephew and me if we would help them recover varieties.
I had done some looking in GRIN, but there seems to be little information, sourcing for Pawnee varieties. The issue is not the fault of GRIN, but the fact that the Pawnee were moved to Oklahoma around 1877. The white settlers brought their seed with them from the east (e.g. Illinois) and the Pawnee varieties were not kept locally. And apparently, they had difficulty growing them in Oklahoma. So other than a few plants/ears from their home gardens, there is no direct seed source. As soon as I have time, I intend to do some searching in GRIN for varieties that may be related to these recalcitrant Pawnee varieties. I would be very open to help, advice, etc. Some of the varieties that have been regrown trace to only a few plants, so there is a sampling/inbreeding issue. Even for these it may be helpful to see if other related sources exist in GRIN.
The Pawnee have a serious issue with obesity and Type II diabetes. They feel that if they could return to their original diet, perhaps there would be fewer health issues. (I suspect that the gardening and hiking to hunt large and small animals would be more important.) There is also a cultural/emotional/religious aspect to their desire to recover these varieties, so I have found it interesting to try to help!
Scientifically, I think it would be interesting to do a small study of these native varieties to analyze their relationships, and the relationship of them to the “Corn-belt Dents”, which as I understand were mostly developed east of the Mississippi. I suspect that there may also be interesting alleles in these.
The Pawnee trace their heritage to the proto-Aztecs, and there is some linguistic evidence for that. Apparently a group moved northeast to present day East Texas and Louisiana, and are known as the Caddo. Some of the Caddo moved north to Kansas/Nebraska and became the four tribal groups of the Pawnee, and the linguistic evidence for their Caddo connection is VERY strong.
Before this situation came up, I had never thought of using genebanks for this sort of cultural purpose. I found several of the Pawnee very interesting. They sincerely feel a connection to the land, fauna and flora. Several of the corn varieties are associated with rituals, and all of them are involved in “sacred bundles”. They stored artifacts, momentos, historical items and specific corn varieties in the bundles. They kept about a dozen varieties each of corn, beans, and squash/pumpkin, and always planted each corn variety at distances of about 500 paces—near the modern seed certification isolation distance! When the stars were in the correct position each spring, the corn was planted with a ceremony. After it reached about knee high, they hoed it to control weeds, followed by a ceremony, after which they would leave for the summer buffalo hunt. Late summer/early fall they would return to their permanent log and earthen houses and start the crop harvest and storage. After harvesting (and more ceremonies) they would go out on the fall hunt, then return to their homes for winter.
Different corns were used for different foods, including a popcorn. I have found the whole experience—reading and meeting the “corn sisters”, and learning a bit about the culture fascinating.
Searching for seeds, and hope
Some people have emailed me from the blog and accused me of saying Indian people must stay poor and we must go back to the stone age. This is not at all what I believe.
Adam Forbes, after a year in search of seeds, tells us what he does believe.
Let Greenpeace pick up the bill
One of the most emotional campaigns that Greenpeace says it is undertaking in Mexico, led by the Argentine Gustavo Ampugnani, is the defense of diversity of native maize against the cultivation of transgenics. Another lie, then.
If indeed that is the purpose, the NGO should donate money to supporting the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) in Texcoco, led by Thomas Lunpkyn, which keeps in a giant refrigerated bunker germplasm of 194 species of American maize, of which 57 varieties are Mexican in a total of 27 thousand samples. The annual budget of the CIMMYT, the cradle of the Green Revolution led by Norman Borlaug, is not more than 23 million pesos. The yearly cost of Greenpeace propaganda against transgenic corn is greater than the budget of a center that has generated seed of such high yield and nutritional quality as the HV-313 maize and Salamanca wheat without using polluting pesticides.
Ok, sorry for the maladroit translation. You can read the original column by Mauricio Flores in “La Razon.” He recently visited CIMMYT, apparently, and was impressed with the genebank. Nice idea. Not sure about those numbers though.
Climate change: predictions hotting up
Faced with pessimistic predictions of the impact of climate change, it’s too easy to throw your hands up in the air and cry “there’s nothing to be done”. Or, as a few people still do, to throw your hands up in the air and cry “there’s no need to do anything”. But if they turn to the latest issue of Global Environmental Change, policy-makers, plant breeders and genebank managers should be able to throw their hands in the air with a cry of joy: “This is what we need to do.”
The authors of Shifts in African crop climates by 2050, and the implications for crop improvement and genetic resources conservation are Marshall Burke and David Lobell of the Program on Food Security and the Environment, at Stanford University, and our own Luigi Guarino, wearing his Global Crop Diversity Trust hat. ((Burke, M., Lobell, D., & Guarino, L. (2009). Shifts in African crop climates by 2050, and the implications for crop improvement and genetic resources conservation Global Environmental Change DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.04.003. And though the article is beyond a paywall, which is why I am quoting extensively, I’m sure one of the authors would be able to send you a reprint.))
The approach is quite straightforward. First, they ask how crop climates will change across Africa. This involves taking historical data for a particular place and comparing the climate there to the predictions of a whole bunch of climate change models. They then ask how quickly the predicted changes will push local climate outside the limits of recent local experience. In addition, they looked at different climates across the continent, asking whether future climates are currently present somewhere in the country, or elsewhere on the continent. The goal is
[T]o identify both future problem regions with no analogs on the continent in today’s climate, and countries whose current crop areas appear likely analogs to many future climates, with the latter case representing promising areas for genetic resource collection and preservation.
They do so for the three primary rain-fed crops of sub-Saharan Africa: maize, sorghum and pearl millet, which provide roughly a third of the calories consumed, and almost two-thirds in some countries.
The big predicted change of all the models is in temperature, which gets hotter almost everywhere, with much less agreement among the models of how much rainfall will change. Skipping over just how fast climates are changing (“rapidly”) and keeping in mind the large time lags involved in breeding crops suited to changed climates, Burke et al. warn that their results “suggest a pressing need to develop breeding programs that anticipate these rapidly warming growing environments.”
So there’s one thing people can do, now.
Where will the raw material for those breeding programmes come from? Genebanks, natch. Alas,
African cereals are often poorly represented in international genebanks, and national genebanks on the continent are frequently resource-constrained and not always representative of the crop genetic diversity in the country.
Burke, Lobell and Guarino look at the spatial distribution of climate analogues and calculate “self-overlap,” overlap of the extremes of projected climate with today’s climate within the country. ((Actually, with the average of the past 10 years of observed climate, long enough to average out extremes but short enough to capture the current climate.)) There’s a nifty graph of the overlap for each of the three crops in all the countries, but the take home message is that despite the lack of overlap in some places, there’s still enough variation that a country might be a good source of variability for its own needs. On the other hand, future temperature regimes are likely to be so hot that even those countries that have large self-overlaps will likely have to look outside their own borders for varieties that will thrive in their expected climates.
Many countries with low self-overlap nevertheless have five or more countries that overlap 75% with their new climates.
For these countries, breeding efforts to cope with warming could greatly benefit from accessing genetic resources beyond their own borders.
Something else to do, now.
There are, however, also countries, most of them in the Sahel, that have low self-overlap and fewer than 5 analogs in other countries. They’re already the hottest climates in Africa, and likely to become hotter, so it ought not to be a surprise that their options are going to be limited.
Unfortunately, primary centers of maize diversity outside Africa, such as in Mexico, enjoy much cooler climates than much of Africa. If breeding efforts cannot sustain yield for maize for these hottest climates in the face of warming temperatures, switches to potentially more heat- and drought-tolerant crops, such as sorghum and millet could be necessary.
Then there are the happy countries whose current climates contain analogues to many future novel climates. Their genetic diversity will be valuable for future breeding efforts. Are they safe?
Sudan, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Mozambique … are particularly poorly represented in national and international genebanks. The top ten analog countries for maize — those which overlap most with anticipated novel climates on the continent — each have fewer than 150 landrace accessions in major genebanks. These countries appear as particularly high priorities for urgent collection and conservation of maize genetic resources. … The results for sorghum and millet show qualitatively similar patterns as the results for maize.
There’s a lot more meat in the paper, which repays close reading. It really does contain evidence-based policy advice, on how best to make use of a limited pot of cash by setting the right priorities and establishing the right kinds of cooperative efforts.
Is anyone (who matters) listening?