Category: Genetic erosion

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Farming relicts in peril in Georgia

From our friend and colleague David comes news of a paper on erosion of crop genetic resources in Georgia. The one in the Caucasus, not the southern US. Anyway, good to be reminded that it’s not just species that are in trouble, but also crop varieties.

There are some nice B&W photos in the article, including this one of a threshing board, which reminded me of one of our earliest posts.

The bottom line?

…in Georgia the main reason for genetic erosion of ancient crop varieties is demographic decline in mountain regions due to harsh economic conditions and lack of modern infrastructure.

Wait. So if there were more people in the mountains, and better roads, there would be more landraces? All those people wouldn’t be growing modern varieties and trucking the harvest to markets in the cities?

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Cloning wins, kinda

Biodiversity? We don’t need no stinkin’ biodiversity.

A cloned steer has won the same prize it (in a manner of speaking) won two years ago. At least it says something about judges’s consistency, except, of course, that they knew. Susan Schneider at the Agricultural Law blog examines the case from all angles, and comes up unhappy.

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Nibbles: Plant breeding book, Ug99, NGS, Monitoring, Genetic diversity and productivity, Adaptive evolution, Amaranthus, Nabhan, Herbarium databases, Pepper, Shade coffee and conservation, Apples, Pathogen diversity, Phytophthora

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Genebanks shenebanks

Why bother building and maintaining huge robotic genebanks, I hear you ask? They’ll just take over the world and we’ll end up having to deal with the Terminator in a few years’ time, no? Well, as it happens there are two pieces today on the Worldwatch Institute’s blog which explain the reasons. Yassir Islam of HarvestPlus says that researchers are “scour[ing] seed banks to find seeds that contain the desired nutrients and then breed these into popular varieties using conventional methods.” And Cary Fowler of the Global Crop Diversity Trust turns to Ug99:

Where do you suppose scientists are looking for a way to deal with the disease? Just as Professor Borlaug did, they are screening hundreds of varieties of wheat to find one that shows resistance to the disease. Where would we turn if we did not have that diversity available in genebanks?

What more do you need? Oh yeah:

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that a third of all genetic resources for food and agriculture have already been lost in the last 100 years.

Right. But at least it’s an improvement on 75%.

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Nibbles: Climate change, Monitoring, Evaluation, Vegetables, FAO newsletters, Guardians