- Rice yields and yield gaps in Southeast Asia: Past trends and future outlook. If average farmers became like best-yielding farmers that would meet 2050 needs, except in the Philippines, where some more structural stuff is needed.
- Method of evaluating diversity of carrot roots using a self-organizing map and image data. The sound you hear is that of butterflies being broken on wheels.
- Bioactive compounds from Capparis spinosa subsp. rupestris. Are pretty much the same as those in subsp. spinosa.
- Constitutive Overexpression of the OsNAS Gene Family Reveals Single-Gene Strategies for Effective Iron- and Zinc-Biofortification of Rice Endosperm. So that’s a good thing, right?
- Analysis of climate paths reveals potential limitations on species range shifts. Corridors not the answer. Or not the only answer. Or not the full answer.
- An updated review of Adansonia digitata: A commercially important African tree. Do baobab scientists not sometimes long for the Time Before Reviews, when they actually, you know, did stuff?
- Genetic diversity, population structure and relationships of Tunisian Thymus algeriensis Boiss. et Reut. and Thymus capitatus Hoffm. et Link. assessed by isozymes. Dad, what’s an isozyme? Ah, son, it’s a thing people used in the Time Before DNA. The two species are different, they need to be managed in different ways.
- Potential Impact of Biotechnology on Adaption of Agriculture to Climate Change: The Case of Drought Tolerant Rice Breeding in Asia. Kinda pointless: “in severe drought both the [drought tolerant] and the conventional varieties were either not planted or, if planted, did not yield”.
Nibbles: Moringa, Fungi, Blue potatoes, GRAIN, Nutrition, Maize Day, Sorghum research
- Mexico embraces moringa against malnutrition.
- Get your mushroom spores here. (You’ll need something for the headache the page induces.)
- Scientist Gardener discovers blue potato chips at altitude.
- GRAIN gets altNobel. It’s not the winning. It’s the being nominated.
- Bioversity stuns world with nutrition strategy. While Jess does poo.
- Damn, looks like we missed National Maize Day again.
- How your United Sorghum Checkoff dollars are being spent.
Seems like all that rice breeding was worth it after all
ACIAR has just published a huge study of the impact of IRRI’s rice breeding work in SE Asia. The press release has the key numbers:
- “Southeast Asian rice farmers are harvesting an extra US$1.46 billion worth of rice a year as a result of rice breeding.”
- “…IRRI’s research on improving rice varietal yield between 1985 and 2009 … [boosted] … rice yield by up to 13%.”
- “…IRRI’s improved rice varieties increased farmers’ returns by US$127 a hectare in southern Vietnam, $76 a hectare in Indonesia, and $52 a hectare in the Philippines.”
- “The annual impact of IRRI’s research in these three countries alone exceeded IRRI’s total budget since it was founded in 1960.”
But I guess the figure the Australians were really after is that in the final table:
A pretty decent return.
Good to see the pioneering work of IRRI (and others) in documenting pedigree information in a usable way recognized — and indeed made use of. And good to see the International Network for Genetic Evaluation of Rice (INGER) and its use of the International Treaty’s multilateral access and benefit sharing system highlighted in the study as a model for germplasm exchange and use. Of course one would have loved to see the genebank’s role in producing the impact also recognized, rather than sort of tacitly taken for granted as usual, but maybe the data can be used to bring that out more in a follow-up.
I see another couple of opportunities for further research, actually. There is little in the study about the genetic nature of the improved varieties that are having all this impact. To what extent can their pedigrees be traced back to crop wild relatives, say? And, indeed, how many different parent lines have been involved in their development, and how genetically different were they? That will surely to some extent determine how sustainable these impressive impacts are likely to be.
Nibbles: IRRI impact, Peruvian food, Nutritional strategy, Ethnobiology, Street food forum, Mulefoot hogs, Polyculture, Cheeses, Asimina triloba, Protected areas
- Australians justify their investment in IRRI. Now that’s what I call impact!
- Peruvian cuisine takes over the world. But, as Eve points out elsewhere, “We have a thousand kinds of potatoes in Peru, thousands” is not hyperbole.
- Jess scoops the world with a nutrition strategy for the masses.
- Indians need sorghum and millets to keep healthy.
- Ethnobiology: The Book.
- Talking about street food. Hold the mayo.
- Not all pigs are cloven-hoofed. A tetrapod zoologist explains syndactyly.
- Polyculture; is it all Pollyanna? Science will answer.
- A flavour map of British cheeses. You know you need it.
- Foraging for pawpaws. Not those pawpaws.
- Bird areas apps. CWRs next?
Money for shiny new rope?
You might think that when Africa’s “most important, but neglected native crops” get $40 million of support we would be all over the story like a rash. So why weren’t we? 1 Mostly it is because it is really hard to find anything positive to say, and we don’t want to sound like nay-sayers.
The gist of the “commitment” Improving Africa’s Neglected Food Crops, which the Clinton Global Initiative ascribes to NEPAD, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, 2 is that private companies and public bodies have teamed up to build, among other things, a biotechnology centre in Ghana. According to UC Davis, the centre:
[W]ill sequence the genome — an organism’s entire collection of genes — for each species and make that information freely available to scientists around the world. That information will then be applied, using the most advanced breeding techniques and technologies, to develop new varieties of crops that are more nutritious, produce higher yields and are more tolerant of environmental stresses, such as drought.
The proposed centre may even be the same one referred to in a SciDev.net piece, although that one “will focus research on cassava, cocoyam, sweet potato and yam”.
Either way, I have to ask whether complete genome sequences are what poor African farmers really need right now. I realize that genomes are groovy, and very scientific, and will undoubtedly deliver great improvements in five years. Right now, though, here’s a small idea of what actual smallholder farmers want. Yesterday morning — I promise — Nduse Mailu left this comment to a post from March 2007:
i stumbled on this blog abd it seems quite awesome to a farmer like me.i currently have about 500 trees and i am in the process of increasing to 4000 and i am seeking guidance on whether to continue growing kienyenji style that is planting seeds from my own fruits or profesionaly that is buying guide me please and to Victor how are your trees doing what are ur challenges if any?
As it happens, the announcement of the new project singles out a tree for special mention.
[T]he consortium has already begun to sequence the (sic) Faidherbia albida, a type of acacia tree that can be used for improving soil nitrogen content and preventing erosion. The tree also has edible seeds and, unlike most trees, sheds its leaves during the rainy season so that it can be grown among field crops without shading them.
Right now, then, what do you suppose Mr Mailu needs? The sequence of Faidherbia albida (aka African winterthorn) with a promise of great improvements to come? Or a reliable supply of seedlings of good enough provenance and the knowledge to get the most out of them? 3
I have no desire to stop Ghana and the rest of Africa developing the skills to sequence whatever they want, although I do question the cost effectiveness of doing the sequencing that way. But why is it even possible to talk of raising $40 million for that when farmers like Mr Mailu are posting comments here looking for very simple advice?
Here’s one possible reason.
“In order to really solve problems, and to get people to join, you have to break them down to their most transparent and simple pieces.”
So says Rajiv Shah, “the young gun fixing USAID” in an interview he gave Fortune magazine. And that idea — simplify, simplify, simplify — Shah got from his mentor Bill Gates, who said:
“The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.”
Uh-huh.
Now, you can take two approaches to the kind of complexity that faces Mr Mailu and millions like him. You could say that providing comprehensive extension services to millions of poor farmers is impossibly complex because the farmers all live in different places and have different farming systems and need different advice. How much simpler to sequence orphan crops.
Or you could say that sequencing orphan crops is unutterably complex, because each crop is likely to be different and to require different tweaks to its genome to enhance its performance in different places, and in the end you’re going to need massive investments in extension services to get the improved crops out to the farmers and ensure that they know how to make good use of them. How much simpler to offer farmers good practical advice now.
How complex is that?