Category: Genetic diversity

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Rapid agrobiodiversity surveys

This SciDevNet piece led me to this Nature article on the theory and practice of the Rapid Biological Inventory, “a quick, intensive taxonomic expedition designed to identify areas of particular biological, geological and cultural significance before development and exploitation take hold.”

Using satellite images, maps and other data, biologists target promising areas and then work with local scientists and students to walk existing and newly cut trails, recording the species they encounter. (…) In parallel with these are social inventories — surveys of the organisational structure of local communities and how they use the forest. The teams work with indigenous groups, government and local conservation organisations to deepen their understanding of the value of the surveyed areas.

I think the concept was pioneered by Conservation International, under the name Rapid Assessment Program, or RAP, but as far as I can see it hasn’t been applied to agricultural biodiversity, at least not explicitly. Seems to me one could come up with a pretty good “rapid agrodiversity assessment” methodology based on standard crop descriptors combined with traditional knowledge, wrapped up in a participatory rural appraisal (PRA) approach. Maybe someone already has?

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Core blimey!

I spent the last few days in Portesham, Dorset (thanks, Lorna and Geoff!), which made it all the more weird to come across this article reprinted in a newspaper in Dubai, where I had to transit for a few hours on the way out there. But it does show that you can still discover (or re-discover) new things even in such a well-researched crop as apples in the UK. Of course, for every upbeat story, there’s a depressing one.

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Heirlooms are better for you

3036 Web Tomatoes come in many more colours than red and one of them — the tangerine tomato — has proved to be a much better source of important nutrients than its red cousins. Tangerine tomatoes are richer in the cis form of the chemical lycopene, while red tomatoes contain the trans form of the chemical. Researchers fed human volunteers tomato sauce for breakfast. Those who ate tangerine tomatoes absorbed almost three times more lycopene than those fed red tomatoes, even though those red varieties were known to be especially high in lycopene.

Lycopene is rapidly finding favour as an antioxidant that can help to protect against various forms of disease. While researchers scramble to produce high-lycopene fruits and vegetables, Tangerine is an heirloom tomato that has been around for decades. I’m sure nobody grew it for its cis-lycopene; they just liked the look and taste. But that’s the thing about agricultural biodiversity; you never know what you’ll find when you go looking.

Article: Carotenoid Absorption in Humans Consuming Tomato Sauces Obtained from Tangerine or High-beta Carotene Varieties of Tomatoes

Photo from the W. Atlee Burpee & Co.

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The place of meat

I just had to link to Tom Philpott’s latest over at Gristmill, for its truly wonderful headline: In Seitan’s Lair.

Seitan, for those unfamiliar with it, is what you are left with if you wash a good lump of wheat dough under water. All the starch goes down the plug, leaving you with a ball of essentially pure wheat gluten protein that can then be fashioned into various meat substitutes.

It crops up late in Philpott’s musings, as an aside on vegan cooking, but if I had been smart enough to think of the headline I would not have let its irrelevance to the whole article put me off either. Anyway, the entire article is worth a read because it tries to put meat-eating into context, reminding us that meat fattened on grain is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that good farming requires diversity, of which livestock should be a small, but important component. Just as meat can be a small but important component of a good diet.

To the vegetarians and vegans who take a different view, I would point out only that animals are awfully good at turning things we humans choose not to eat, like grass and acorns and household scraps, into things we do, like lamb chops cheese and prosciutto. It seems wasteful not to use them in that way.

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EU conserves sheep and goats

Not sure what to make of this. A European Research Headline piece of news gives some information about a project to use molecular genetics, socio-economics and geostatistics to decide which populations of sheep and goats are worth conserving. But the article doesn’t actually say anything about the project’s conclusions. And when I looked earlier today the project web site had not been updated since Agusut 2006. That’s annoying because the results could well be interesting and I’d really like to know how they analyzed the information and how they used it to advise policymakers.