Neglected species

April 5, 2016April 6, 2016

For royalty or for all?

You still have time to arrange to listen to the AgTalks session on “forgotten food crops,” from which I’ve borrowed the title of this post.

AgTalks presents the latest thinking, trends and research on policies and innovation in small-scale farming. This session, titled “For royalty or for all? Amaranth, teff, millet and cassava,” is intended to raise awareness about forgotten food crops that were once central to people’s diet centuries ago. These lost crops have huge nutritional value and economic potential, just waiting to be rediscovered.

The webcast is just waiting to be discovered on the IFAD website. It starts in about half an hour…

LATER: And thanks to the organizers (IFAD) for taking my question over Twitter. Fascinating to hear from Mary M. Delano Frier that when she started her work in Mexico using amaranth to improve kids’ nutrition in schools, she had to get material from the USA genebank. That’s now changed, apparently.

April 4, 2016April 4, 2016

Brainfood: IPR in breeding, Cryo costs, Undervalued spp, Biodiversity change drivers, Cassava proteins, Sorghum seed sources

‘Do Not Privatize the Giant’s Shoulders’: Rethinking Patents in Plant Breeding. “Toll roads, not road blocks.”
Implementation and cost analysis of a regional farm animal cryobank: an Italian case study. 2497 semen doses from 46 donor animals from 5 breeds cost €1550 annually, 83% for liquid nitrogen.
Opportunities for Underutilised Crops in Southern Africa’s Post–2015 Development Agenda. Good for marginal land, good for nutritional diversity. But still not properly valued.
Agricultural Management and Climatic Change Are the Major Drivers of Biodiversity Change in the UK. The first negatively, the second with mixed results. What about CWR specifically?
Domestication Syndrome Is Investigated by Proteomic Analysis between Cultivated Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) and Its Wild Relatives. The leaf and root proteins of two cassava cultivars were different from those of one wild accession. More work needed, methinks.
Interhousehold variability and its effects on seed circulation networks: a case study from northern Cameroon. Wealthy households have access to more diverse sorghum seed sources.

April 1, 2016

How to get over your quinoa guilt trip, kinda

We’ve poked fun in the past at people who think that high prices for quinoa are taking food out of the mouths of poor farmers in Bolivia and Peru, but here’s a confession.

We didn’t have actual objective evidence that this was not the case. Just a gut feeling, based on experience and knowing people who know quinoa farmers. Oh, and lots of research on other commodities by Nobel prize winner Angus Deaton.

Now we do have evidence, from real agricultural economists, which I’ve written about at length (and thanks for giving me the length) at NPR’s The Salt.

Your Quinoa Habit Really Did Help Peru’s Poor. But There’s Trouble Ahead.

Bottom line, from the researchers:

“The claim that rising quinoa prices were hurting those who had traditionally produced and consumed it [is] patently false.”

And that goes for nutrition too, as the article explains.

So what’s the trouble ahead? There are three, actually, two of which will be familiar to readers of this site.

First, the boom in export markets is focussed on very few of the 3000 or so extant varieties of quinoa, which hold the future to further adaptation of quinoa as environmental conditions change. Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation Services could help to solve that.

Secondly, the sustainability of quinoa growing in the high Andes is in doubt because more intensive practices are resulting in soil erosion and degradation. No easy solution, unless the farmers band together and implement some minimum sustainability standards. That might give them an edge in an increasingly competitive market, the basis for confronting perhaps the biggest threat …

Prices have already started to drop, and are already well down on their peak. That’s hardly surprising. High prices have sucked in global competitors. Farmers in South America are holding on to their stocks in the hope that prices will rise again, but few of the people I spoke to have any expectation that they will rise.

As Marc Bellemare, one of the agricultural economists, told me:

“If we’re going to rejoice when prices go up, maybe we should worry when prices go down.”

A quick, selective trawl in our archives produces:

Fairtrade quinoa vodka hits the stores on APRIL 15, 2010
The quinoa story: it’s complicated on MARCH 28, 2011
Quinoa phylogenetics unraveled on JULY 15, 2011
Quinoa in Pakistan on JANUARY 2, 2013
Quinoa: it’s still really complicated, and nobody cares about it in December on JANUARY 24, 2013
United colours of Quinoa on FEBRUARY 20, 2013
The great quinoa debate: statistics to the rescue on SEPTEMBER 11, 2013
Quinoa misconceptions unmasked on MARCH 28, 2014
Quinoa backlash backlash recap recap on APRIL 27, 2014

March 22, 2016March 22, 2016

Nibbles: Coffee taxonomy, Agarwood trade, Apios promotion, Dog species concept, Seed collecting, Kudzu control, ICARDA chickpeas, Ancient maize beer, Quinoa landscapes, History of domestication, Breeding mistakes, EU breeding value, Priming, Wild flower ecotypes, Vitellaria use

Coffee botany resources.
Uncovering the illegal agarwood trade.
Developing the potato bean. First step: find a new name.
Dog taxonomy explained.
Project Baseline sets a, ahem, baseline, for studying plant diversity under climate change.
Ok, random shout-out for my niece Francesca’s work on kudzu bug natural control. Because I can. And she’s fabulous.
Blooming chickpeas!
The inhabitants of Casas Grandes brewed maize beer in the 14th century. Well of course they did.
Peruvian quinoa landscapes have a name: aynokas.
Crop domestication 101.
Where (commercial) breeders go wrong.
Presumably none of above mistakes are made by EU plant breeding companies.
Stimulating plant defences for faster response to pest and disease attack.
Germany told to go for local meadow seeds.
Use of shea butter trees goes way back.

March 21, 2016March 21, 2016

Brainfood: Aquaculture food, Pacific bananas, Tepary genome, Mexican wheat, Legume pollinators, Brazilian coconuts, Soybean herbivory

Environmental health impacts of feeding crops to farmed fish. Wild fish is being replaced by plant-based food, which is both good and bad.
Traditional Banana Diversity in Oceania: An Endangered Heritage. Pacific starchy bananas are all AAB, but fall into 2 genetic subgroups and 3 morphotypes. Persistence of diversity is linked to persistence of traditions.
Gene-based SNP discovery in tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius) and common bean (P. vulgaris) for diversity analysis and comparative mapping. Two groups in domesticated teparies, plus the even more distinct wild. Close similarity with common bean means genes could be moved between the two species.
Unlocking the genetic diversity of Creole wheats. Wheat has had long enough to adapt to different Mexican environments.
Enhancing Legume Ecosystem Services through an Understanding of Plant–Pollinator Interplay. Legume breeders should consider functional floral traits.
Genetic Relationships among Tall Coconut Palm (Cocos nucifera L.) Accessions of the International Coconut Genebank for Latin America and the Caribbean (ICG-LAC), Evaluated Using Microsatellite Markers (SSRs). The Brazilian material came from Africa.
Characterization of Natural and Simulated Herbivory on Wild Soybean (Glycine soja Seib. et Zucc.) for Use in Ecological Risk Assessment of Insect Protected Soybean. If transgenes conferring insect protection were to escape to the wild soybean in Japan, it would probably not have any effect on its weediness.