The World Urban Forum is taking place down in my home town this week. That I suppose was what provided at least part of the impetus for the United Nations Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN) to issue a statement on the Nutrition Security of Urban Populations. Not to be outdone, FAO has a publication out too, Growing Greener Cities in Africa, touted as the “first status report on urban and peri-urban horticulture in Africa.” A cursory glance doesn’t reveal much on diversity in these documents, but this is an issue that’s always intrigued me. Could cities act as magnets for crop inter- and intraspecific diversity? After all, they have lots of micro-niches, and have been attracting people from all over for decades, who could have come with their seeds. Is it possible that varieties could still be grown in cities after they’ve disappeared in their native areas? Or at any rate that crop diversity in a city is higher than in the surrounding countryside? Sometime ago we did a small survey of sweet potato diversity in Nairobi roadside verges that seemed to suggest that the menu of varieties was at least somewhat different from what was available in nearby rural areas. Should write that up one day. Anybody know of similar studies?
What I read on my summer holidays
Yeah, summer is over and I’m back at work. Maybe you noticed I haven’t contributed much here in the past month or so. Or maybe you didn’t. Jeremy kept up a steady stream of agrobiodiversity nuggets pretty much all through August. But my lack of activity on the blog doesn’t mean I haven’t tried to keep up, as you would know if you followed us on Facebook, Twitter or Scoop.it. Anyway, for those that don’t, and would like to catch up on my summer reading, here is, in nibble form, what caught my eye during the past month or so:
- “The potato is a religious commodity in America.” Explaining the governance crisis in the US using the humble spud.
- Wait a minute though: “The sizzle seems to be gone from America’s long-term relationship with the potato.” Which apparently means it needs an extreme makeover, colour-wise. For which you’ll need a genebank.
- A tree’s leaves can be genetically different from its roots. Does that mean we have to re-think all molecular phylogenies?
- And speaking of a tree’s leaves, these ones are a thousand years old and give you a buzz.
- A toff with a passion for pigs. P.G. Wodehouse had something to say about this, didn’t he?
- Turns out WFP has a podcast. And ICIMOD has an RSS feed.
- A mathematician factchecks Michael Pollan.
- Pear with me please, while I tell you about another USDA fruit collection.
- 15 Africa-changing innovations include orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. As if they weren’t there before. Anyway, they were THE story for a couple of weeks in August.
- 12 food security innovations include increasing crop diversity. With orange-fleshed sweet potatoes?
- How to put that banana genome to some use.
- Getting the most out of your enumerators.
- IUCN’s Conservation Campus. Any ag? And on a similar topic, training materials in anthropology.
- Automating conservation assessment of plants. You’ll need provenance data from herbaria such as this one at CIP, of course. Oh, and speaking of CIP, they need a phylogeneticist.
- A market opportunity for the mother-in-law?
- Measuring the health of the oceans. Hey, but it’s not all bad for fish.
- Ten species which rely on ex situ conservation. And why that number will go up. How to pay for it all, though?
- Book on the recent history of agricultural research reviewed. I wonder if they looked at the private sector. Because it seems there may be a case to answer.
- Another big grant for taxonomic databases. Ah but this is all going to be community-driven.
- Looks like this Australian genebank could have done with a decent database, community-driven or not.
The complexities of conserving crop diversity in Italy
A certain Mario C. has collected 178 signatures for a petition to save the “Banca dei Semi di Bari”:
We the undersigned ask the judges responsible, the National Research Council, and the political authorities at national, regional, provincial and city levels to “Save at any cost the Seed Bank of Bari.” Including if necessary delivering these seeds to us or other third parties who love nature, so they do not die. For example, as has been done by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Brescia when they delivered Green Hill beagle dogs to ordinary citizens (about 2500 beagles) to save them from vivisection.
The Italian genebank in question, the largest in the National Research Council’s (CNR) network, is thus described:
It’s the first seed bank in Italy and the second in Europe. It maintains 84,000 germplasm samples from more than 60 genera and over 600 species of cultivated plants. It was established by FAO to expose the high genetic erosion caused by the Green Revolution.
Skipping blithely over the somewhat distorted version of the history of the Bari genebank, the numbers quoted 1 suggest that this is a reaction to a recent article in a local paper, which had this to say about the nature of the threat to the genebank, unhelpfully not mentioned in the petition:
Way back in 2003, the temperature of the cold rooms rose above the optimal, that is -20-0°. Failure to repair the rooms in timely fashion by the CNR has caused extensive damage to the genetic heritage so that, following a dispute between the Bank and the National Research Council (CNR), an investigation by the judiciary found CNR to be responsible. Although the samples have been released from seizure since 2009, the Region of Puglia apparently has not yet acquired them to provide for their regeneration. No one else has offered to do this and they are back in the hands of the CNR. Meanwhile an immense and invaluable genetic agrobiological patrimony is perishing abandoned.
In past years appeals by, among others, Dr Perrino to protect the biodiversity represented and perpetuated through these seeds from being destroyed have gone unheeded. To prevent the worst is simple, just regenerate this germplasm by planting it. Inexplicably, no one seems interested in doing this, starting with the political class, according to Perrino, former director of the Institute of Germplasm of CNR, Bari (1983-1993, 1998-2002).
Now, I don’t know to what extent these allegations are justified. There’s no mention of any problem in Italy 2 in the recent big official EU document on PGRFA. Not that you’d necessarily expect to find mention of such problems in big official EU documents. There’s been nothing much on the grapevine. Not that that’s always reliable. The whole thing may just be a misunderstanding. But this has been going back and forth for years now. It would be nice to have some data from the Bari genebank to settle the question once and for all. Regular germination tests are surely carried out there. The results are surely documented. Why not publish them, and set everybody’s mind at rest? And to what extent is the issue moot anyway, the material in Bari being duplicated elsewhere?
Meanwhile, there’s a press release from the Italian ministry of agriculture contextualizing the recent EU court decision that the prohibition on commercializing seed of traditional varieties is invalid. Jeremy said there was probably more to it than that, and of course there is. Apparently, you still have to register your traditional variety in Italy. But it only takes 150 days, the ministry assures us, it’s not too difficult, and entirely free.
Ex situ or in situ, conserving crop diversity can sometimes seem a vale of tears.
Nibbles: Consultation, Biofuels, Konjac, Ecosystem services
- CGIAR wants to hear from you. No, really.
- “[B]iofuels are the number one threat to global food security.”
- Zero-calorie noodles untangled. Some edible aroids just aren’t all that edible.
- Natural England reports on the ecosystem services of agricultural land.
Wild about rice landraces
There’s been some interest in a new rice variety that grows better in soils deficient in phosphorus. The BBC touted Wild rice gene gives yield boost and said that
A gene from wild Indian rice plants can significantly raise the yield of common varieties in nutrient-poor soils.
Moments later, however, the report informs readers that
The gene came from a variety called Kasalath, native to nutrient-poor soils of eastern India.
I guess we all have a ways to go in raising media awareness about the subtleties of genetic resources. A wild plant would hardly be a variety that has a name now would it?
IRRI’s press release and the scientists’ paper in Nature are both clear that the gene in question came from a “traditional rice variety”. And the BBC’s report — despite later referring to “wild varieties” — picked that up. But someone, probably some poor put-upon sub, decided they knew better.
What does it matter? Partly for reasons of conservation. That’s of no interest to the BBC, but IRRI proudly “conserves more than 114,000 different types of rice in the International Rice Genebank”. If they are there, does it matter whether they are still in farmers’ fields? At least one person, however, is using the mistaken characterisation to ask an odd (rhetorical?) question:
[T]his research supports claims that wild crop relatives hold an inventory of genes, the value of which is huge. How do we protect more effectively this rich resource?
I’ll leave others to answer that one, if they must.
As for the gene in question, it seems to promote root growth, which is what enables the plant to scavenge more nutrients from poor soils. I may well have more to say on that in a day or two.