Category: Policy

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BBC Radio investigates the seed trade

BBC Radio 4 dedicated The Food Programme earlier in February to an investigation of seed exchanges and plant breeding. Here’s what the programme has to say:

Since the earliest times humans have selected particular seeds to resow next season, noticing mutations that they liked and in so doing have shaped the nature of food. This shaping has never been greater than today, when technology makes our ability to shape our future food enormous, but who is to control what qualities we want in our peas or tomatoes?

Sheila Dillon traces the history of plant breeding from neolithic times to today’s GM era with Noel Kingsbury, author of Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding. Early examples of tasteless strawberries well suited to the railroad, and fights between farmers and millers over which wheat variety to grow, inform today’s battles for control.

Much of it will be familiar to readers here, and experts will doubtless find nits to pick, but overall well worth spending 25 minutes to listen.

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Nibbles: Olives, Livestock, Data, Data sharing, Cheese paring, Book, tanzania

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Welcome, Carnival goers

If you’ve just arrived here from Scientia Pro Publica, welcome. We’re never quite sure where we fit in the overall “science” matrix. Agronomy is science, sure, and so is plant breeding, mostly, and GMOs well, obviously. But stuff like making better use of agrobiodiversity often sits uncomfortably with people who want simple solutions to problems that they see as simple too. Not enough water? Irrigate! Saline soil? Breed saline tolerance! Missing vitamin A? Engineer it into a staple!

So it was interesting to find Eric Michael Johnson’s analysis of policy options for Haiti at the latest Scientia Pro Publica. The main thrust seems to be that rewarding Haitian farmers for good behaviour rather than punishing them for bad is more likely to have the beneficial impacts sought as Haiti struggles back from disaster. Trouble is, the policy analysts seems to think that using high-tech seeds and more fertilizer are the best good behaviours to incentivize; there are other options, you know. And as Johnson points out, the government of Haiti is not allowed to subsidize its farmers, not even for seeds and fertilizer. This is nuts. So is Mauka to Maui’s wonderful story of The ant and the toad, in a good way. 1

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Mexico builds a genebank

INIFAP has photos of progress in building Mexico’s new National Genetic Resources Centre. It’s about a third finished, and needs to be ready in time for this year’s celebrations of the bicentenary of Mexican independence. Total cost is about US$ 30 million, if I interpret the figure in the text correctly. I hope the recurrent costs necessary to keep the place running once it’s built will also be forthcoming with similar generosity.

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Nibbles: Community genebank, Traditional medicine, Agarwood, Radish introgression, Kentucky bluegrass, Frison, Vavilov, Pollinators, Collecting strategy

  • Bamboo microscope used to document rice varieties at Indian village genebank. Want one.
  • And more documentation and conservation of traditional knowledge in India: this time it’s medicines.
  • Nigel Chaffey’s latest botanical buffet table at the Annals of Botany has stuff on nomenclature and genomes. Always worth following.
  • Latest on saving agarwood. And more. Thanks to twittering by @AsiaForestry.
  • Biofortified blogs research on geneflow between crops and their wild relatives.
  • Kentucky bluegrass pix. Botany Photo of the Day is also worth following. You guys all use Google Reader, right?
  • “Any serious discussion of biodiversity conservation must include the diversity of crops and livestock…” Right on.
  • Vavilov hits Abyssinia. Another one for Reader.
  • Pollinator trends in Europe and the world. It ain’t good.
  • Your botanic gardens needs at least 15 individuals of that palm.