Nibbles: Corn diseases, German potato collection, Vietnam rice trials, Endophyte strain, Fish nutrition, Himalayan pea, Subversive seeds

  1. The US needs better maize.
  2. German genebank looks for the best potatoes.
  3. Vietnam looks for better rice in IRRI’s genebank.
  4. New Zealand markets an endophyte for better grass performance.
  5. Some Timor-Leste fish are better than others.
  6. The Himalayas have a better pea. Of some kind.
  7. How’s that for subversive cataloguing?

A breed is a breed is a breed?

I feel maybe yesterday’s Nibble on the definition of a “breed” may have been a bit too laconic, even for me. So let me give a bit more context.

A ram and ewe of the South Down and Norfolk breeds of sheep. Etching, ca 1822. Created 1 June 1822. Cattle. Livestock – Breeding. Domestic animals. Livestock breeds. Rams. Ewes. Work ID: ytvy3rzq.

The link was to a YouTube playlist, which was described thus (link added):

The presentations in this playlist are from the webinar on “Genomic assessment of genetic variation and the future of the breed concept”, originally held on 12.12.2024 under the umbrella of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). This represents the culmination of collaborative work by a diverse group of experts from institutions from all around the world to prepare materials for a sub-chapter in the upcoming 3rd Report on the State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

It amounts to over an hour of talks, but if I had to summarize the point the playlist is making, it is that genomics is redefining a breed as a fluid, porous, genotypically-characterized population rather than a fixed, pedigree-based, phenotypic entity. Thus, it is shifting livestock conservation from saving labels (“Breed A”) to preserving genetic options.

Here’s a handy table I came up with to describe the change:

Interesting to juxtapose this to the post a few days ago on how to value and use Indigenous knowledge to solve today’s problems. Would Indigenous livestock keepers necessarily care about those genetic options more than their traditional breed?

It would be great to hear from people engaged in livestock conservation on this. It’s unfortunately not a community I interact with much.

Nibbles: Supermarkets, Cate Blanchett, ABS, Transformation, Medieval haymaking, Aurochs rewilding, Breed concept

  1. What’s wrong with supermarkets.
  2. Cate Blanchett on the Millennium Seed Bank. Attitude to supermarkets unknown.
  3. Access & Benefit Sharing 101. Cate Blanchett unavailable for comment.
  4. Experts weigh in on how we should change how we eat. Nobody but Cate Blanchett will listen, but supermarkets and seeds feature, for what it’s worth.
  5. How they ate in the Middle Ages without supermarkets. Or at least harvested.
  6. After we’re done with medieval haymaking, let’s bring back the aurochs too. And put it in a supermarket?
  7. Yeah but what is a breed anyway? Or an aurochs, for that matter.

Brainfood: Agroecology, Afghan wheat, CWR microbes, Chocolate microbes, Liberica coffee, Wild apples, USDA cotton collection, Parmesan cattle, Sweetpotato genome, Vertical tomatoes

Brainfood: Defining domestication, Pig domestication, Archaeological orphan crops, Levant Neolithic causes, Altiplano agricultural origins, Irish cattle, Islamic Green Revolution, Ancient fish DNA, Ancient Chinese rice