DNA barcoding is based on a gamble (or maybe a shrewd guess), and perhaps a smidgin of circular thinking: that there is a chunk of genome short enough to sequence quickly and cheaply, and which shows just enough variability for the entire sequence to be the same for all members of a species, but different for different species. Well, the gamble seems to have paid off. A suitable bit of a gene has duly been identified for both animals and plants, data are being ammassed, and there’s talk of a portable gadget being available in a few years which will read off the relevant sequence from a bit of leaf or skin or something and compare it with a database to give you the species name right there in the field.
Maintaining diversity: an experiment
When we talk about biodiversity — including agrobiodiversity — we really mean three things at the same time: diversity among ecosystems, among species, and within species. Scientists usually study these scales separately, but can diversity at one level somehow affect diversity at another? That’s the question tackled by an experiment described last week in Science ((MRichard A. Lankau and Sharon Y. Strauss (14 September 2007) Science 317 (5844), 1561. DOI: 10.1126/science.1147455.)) and discussed by one of the authors in Scitizen (fortunately, because the full paper is behind a paywall). ((Thanks to Andy for the headsup.))
E-agriculture practitioners meet
It’s E-Agriculture Week in Rome next week. Lots of people coming, lots of stuff going on. I’ll try to be very Web 2.0 about it and do some posting when cool agricultural biodiversity comes up, but also check out the blog of the centerpiece conference.
Green Millennium Revolution Villages debated
I’ve blogged a few times before about the Millennium Villages. An initiative of the Earth Institute at Columbia University launched in 2004, the Millennium Villages project aims “to demonstrate how the eight Millennium Development Goals can be met in rural Africa within five years through community-led development.” ((“The Millennium Village effort is explicitly linked to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and addresses an integrated and scaled-up set of interventions covering food production, nutrition, education, health services, roads, energy, communications, water, sanitation, enterprise diversification and environmental management. This has never been done before.”))
Pedro Sanchez, director of the Millennium Villages Project, The Earth Institute at Columbia University debated the project, and also Africa’s proposed new Green Revolution (another frequent subject hereabouts), with the anthropologist Paul Richards of Wageningen University yesterday at the Development Studies Association Annual Conference. That’s going on at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK.
Would have been great to be there, and ask why it is that supporting the Millennium Villagers manage and enhance their agrobiodiversity doesn’t seem to be much on the agenda. But here’s the next best thing: a description of the encounter, one of a series of entries on the conference you’ll find at The Crossing, the blog of the STEPS Centre. ((“The Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability (STEPS) Centre is a major new interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement hub combining development with science and technology studies. The STEPS Centre addresses two global challenges: linking environmental sustainability with better livelihoods and health; and making science and technology work to reduce poverty and increase social justice.”))
Here’s an intriguing snippet from the blog:
Richards says the Green Revolution induces spread of innovation by showing the seed system the “correct” pattern. But an alternative can be based on unsupervised learning that already takes place, he adds, whizzing through some very big and interesting ideas very quickly.
Kinda makes you wish you’d been there in person, doesn’t it?
US agricultural assistance to the vulnerable
The US Bureau of International Information Programs has been producing “a series of articles on U.S. food aid and agricultural assistance for vulnerable populations around the world.” The fifth is just out, and this is how it starts:
Scientists from the United States and other nations want to create another “green revolution,” particularly in Africa, that would help poor countries better meet their own food needs and the demands of export markets.
Within governmental, university and private-sector partnerships, researchers are working on new agricultural technologies that can help poor countries end food scarcity and malnutrition.
The article then goes on to list various examples of US scientists working with national agricultural research programmes around the world and CGIAR centres to develop such innovations as “improved crop varieties, more effective fertilizers, new livestock vaccines and new food-processing techniques.”
Which is fine. But why not even a passing mention of the National Plant Germplasm System? At over 450,000 accessions, the genebanks of the NPGS are second only to those of the CGIAR in the amount of agrobiodiversity they conserve. That’s a lot of raw materials for innovation.