UK genebank still threatened

Perhaps because a general election in the United Kingdom is days away, the debate over the future of HRI Wellesbourne, which we noted here almost six months ago, is beginning to be heard above the din. ((And thanks to Colin Tudge for making it audible to me.)) HRI (Horticulture Research International) is one of the last surviving bits of UK horticultural research. It also houses the Genetic Resources Unit, the UK’s primary vegetable genebank. Warwick University, which owns and operates HRI, has plans to merge it with a Life Sciences division, possibly using the land more profitably to build a housing estate.

Much of the discussion is about the loss of jobs, the loss of expertise, the loss of competitiveness and so on. These are hugely important topics, on which I don’t feel qualified to comment. Then there is the apparent duplicity and callousness of management at Warwick University, which does have a reputation for its strength in “business”. On balance, though, it does seem to be just a bit short-sighted for governments to promote food security, exhort people to eat more nutritious food, and then stand by while one of the few places still able to deliver both is closed.

Personally, I’m not optimistic. Warwick prices everything, values nothing, and acts accordingly. But more idealistic people than me are beginning to stir.

Charlie Clutterbuck, who among his many other talents runs a successful website on sustainable food, has devoted several pages there to information about Wellesbourne, including links to a Petition and a Google Group, that is a huge repository of information.

It would be premature to judge either the election or what the winners will do about HRI. Horticulture Week, a trade paper, asked the key political contenders whether they would intervene to prevent the loss, and if so how. None of the replies is particularly edifying, but that’s hardly surprising. ((It’s the second question on the page.)) Governments of all stripes talk about the need for research to enhance food security, and some of HRI’s science may yet find a new home. However it currently looks as if the foundations of breeding, the genebank and the agricultural biodiversity it contains, are being allowed to decay. Maybe Luigi’s right.

Let it close, I say. Just transfer the contents to some place where its long term conservation and availability is guaranteed, then let it close.

All the politicos would have to do then would be to support long-term conservation somewhere else and take advantage of shared access to enjoy the benefits of someone else’s efforts.

Let’s define success, shall we?

Professor Robert Paarlberg has a long article in Foreign Policy that takes a critical look at feeding the poor. There’s much in it I agree with, and probably more I disagree with. I do have one important question, which I’m loathe to see buried among the comments at Foreign Policy.

Paarlberg devotes some time to attacking the “myth” that the Green Revolution was a failure. “In Asia,” he writes “the Green Revolution was good for both agriculture and social justice.” So here’s my question:

Why are 44% of the children under 5 years old in India malnourished?

Answers in the comments, please.

Nibbles: CIAT, Apples, Poverty, Protected areas, Honey, Juniper, Irish oak

  • Learn about CIAT’s reseach via the posters they put on slideshare. Couple on their beans and cassava genebank.
  • Trying to speed up apple breeding.
  • Biodiversity interventions find it difficult to fight poverty. How about agrobiodiversity interventions?
  • More bad news: protected areas don’t work anyway. At least for trees in Burkina Faso.
  • Boffins trying to spot contraband honey. There’s contraband honey?
  • Gin drinkers told to start worrying.
  • Forest of Belfast project to wind up, but not before finding really old oak.

Nibbles: Microlivestock, Urban ag, Ag info, School meals in Peru, Agrobiodiversity indicators, Nature special supplement, Extension, Breeding organic, Forgetting fish in China, Deforestation, Russian potatoes, Fijian traditional knowledge, Megaprogrammes