- iSPOT to map common names to Latin names. Jeremy says “Good luck with that.”
- International Conference on Biodiversity Informatics. Jeremy says “Good luck with that too.”
- Online discussion forums for the ICBI, above. Agriculture! Forestry! Fisheries!
- Uganda joins the rush to Svalbard global genebank.
- Scientists to clone pashmina goat. Er … why?
- Adopt-an-Italian-olive-tree.
- International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) meets so we can eats.
- Inverted root grafting of canistel at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.
- In vino veritas.
Better early warning needed
Over the years Baloch lost 250 acres of cultivable land to the sea, some 50 buffaloes and around 80 goats. “Altogether my family lost 3,500 acres. We were once considered big landlords in this place with farmers working for us. We even paid tax to the government. Now we don’t even have even an acre to plough,” he says wistfully.
According to the revenue department, 86 percent of the 235,485 acres of fertile land in Kharo Chhan has been swallowed by the sea. The population, over the past decade, has declined from 15,000 to 5,000.
I come across this kind of statement all the time: stories of the possible disappearance, by implication at least, of agricultural biodiversity. Maybe because I’m looking out for them. This happens to come from an article on the Indus delta in Pakistan, but another recent one was from Cameroon. There should be a way of keeping track of such threats, shouldn’t there? And verify them. And maybe — the horror! — eventually do something about them perhaps.
But wait, there is! That’s what the early warning part of FAO’s World Information and Early Warning System is supposed to be doing. Too bad it isn’t. You could argue that the fault lies with the WIEWS network of focal points. But you can’t blame it too much on them. Those forms for reporting threats to landraces, crop wild relatives and ex situ collections are deadly, aren’t they. Why not a lighter, online, interactive, map-based system? You — that is, anybody — leave a marker on a Google Maps interface and link to a web page or document, or maybe just an observation you made during a vacation trip.
Kind of like we do here. Except that we can’t, using our current system, map only the posts dealing with genetic erosion. But maybe it’s a model WIEWS should be looking at? The technology is certainly there. Maybe there are national-level or local-level systems that are using this kind of approach? Let us know.
LATER: And here’s another example.
Agrobiodiversity in trouble in Cameroon
Ivo Arrey Mbongaya of the African Centre for Community and Development in Cameroon has a blog on the Eldis Community and has recently discussed threats to two different sorts of agricultural biodiversity in his country. Apparently, goat rearing is in decline, because of the disappearance of grazing land, harsh policies about strays and the lack of veterinary services. He doesn’t say if a local breed is involved, however, and does make reference to “efforts by Heifer Cameroon to distribute cheap animals.”
Also in trouble is “eru,” or Gnetum africanum, a shrub whose leaves are consumed as a green vegetable. Unsustainable harvesting and land use changes are taking their toll, and Ivo recommends taking the plant into domestication.There’s been some work on that by ICRAF and others.
Nibbles: Bananas, Sorghum, Agave, Big vs small, Cauliflower, Wine, Chestnut, Farmers’ rights, India, Aquaculture, Medicinals, Tarpan
- How they grow bananas in Fadan Karshi, Nigeria.
- How they grow sorghum in Karamoja, Uganda.
- How tequila is ruining small farms in Mexico. Or is it?
- How small farms cannot feed Africa. Or can they? Join the debate! Via.
- How the Brits plan to rebrand cauliflower. This I gotta see.
- How the ancient Chinese made wine out of rice, honey, and fruit. Pass the bottle.
- How Georgia is mapping where its chestnuts used to be.
- How farmers’ rights are being implemented.
- How Indian agriculture should move beyond wheat and rice. Ok, but what would everybody eat?
- How microsatellites can be used to help catfish breeding.
- How Ni Wayan Lilir is helping people learn about the traditional healing herbs of Bali.
- How the Brits brought back the Konik.
Maize aguafiestas
From Jacob van Etten.
Uncorking a big bottle of agrobiodiversity, that is what Mexico’s first farmers did when they domesticated maize. Not only is maize enormously malleable, genetic diversity also goes everywhere through cross-pollination. That is in traditional farming systems. Modern maize improvement has been about sorting out this abundance by “freezing” it into breeding lines, to get some control over the diversity feast. But what happens when the hybrids are released into the dance room again?
An Italian study just out quantifies the gene flow from hybrids to traditional varieties. It finds different degrees of purity in the traditional varieties, but no genetic erosion. This is an interesting finding in the light of writings about “creolisation” in Mesoamerican agriculture. Creolisation, the mixing of modern and traditional varieties, is thought to lead to plants that combine their benefits. I have always wondered if the creolised varieties of Mesoamerica are not modern varieties “creolised” by selection instead of mixing with traditional varieties. Something similar to the Italian study would be needed to find this out.
The question is only one step removed from the issue of gene flow from transgenic crops to traditional varieties. Perhaps you remember the Quist and Chapela paper published in Nature in 2001 on the presence of transgenes in Mexican traditional maize, and the controversy it generated. A new study confirms the presence of transgenes in Mexico with an improved study design. Through genetic population simulations it also explains why detection of transgenes is erratic and prone to giving false negatives. The distribution of the transgenes is likely to be very skewed. A few fields will have much of them, but most will have very few. This has to be taken into account and therefore authors call for more rigorous sampling methods to detect transgene presence.
There is little discussion or speculation about the effects of transgenes on maize diversity. Will the transgenes just add to the existing diversity, like the hybrids in Italy? Will they perhaps produce some benefits, like the creolized varieties? Or will, in some Monty Python-like scenario, the big seed companies pick up the message about rigorous sampling and start to trace transgenes in Mexico in order to charge farmers for unlicensed use of their technology?