Our friends the seed dispersers

Botany One has been running an entertaining little series from Nigel Chaffey on how plants get about, as seeds and as the gametes that produce seeds. In the third and final part, we get to plants that could reasonably be considered of interest here, to whit cacao and useful forest trees. It turns out that chimpanzees in West Africa are not above nicking a few pods from cacao trees and spreading the seeds an average of 407 m from the plantations. I like the ideas that this illuminates the thorny question of who “owns” a crop.

Sticking with West African trees, it seems that gorilla and chimpanzee dung offers “a cost effective and non-invasive way to restore native forested habitats”. Of course, if the gorillas and chimpanzees are themselves threatened and don’t travel widely, that’s not going to help forests further afield. Chaffey suggests collecting their dung and distributing these auto-fertilising, self-selecting seed packages directly over the area to be reforested.

I wonder what the forest genetic resources people would make of that?

A sustainable way forward for public plant breeding

How can public plant breeding programs reap royalties and research investments while keeping their cultivars in the public domain?

Good question. For some answers, see the proceedings on the 2016 Intellectual Property Rights for Public Plant Breeding Summit, released yesterday by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

Here’s the organizer, Bill Tracy:

For many years now, we have heard how public plant breeding has been on the decline. What was exciting about this meeting is that we heard real world solutions implemented by colleges and technology transfer agencies that not only support current cultivar development but have increased the number of plant breeders, crop varieties released, and royalties generated.

In an era of continuing consolidation on the private side, it’s good to see public sector plant breeding making a stand.

Nibbles: IPR handbook, People’s food, Open seeds, Club apples, Comms, Indian mangoes, Chili history, Bitter cassava, Better yams

Nibbles: Royal Soc discussion, Meyer Medal, Adopt-a-seed, Organic coffee, Seed book, CGIAR genebanks, Open source seeds, EUCARPIA conference, Vegetables, Geographic indications