- Jim Gerdes shows how the sunflower blossom is emasculated. Ouch.
- Mary Taylor interviewed on Radio Australia about the ITPGRFA and all that.
- The genetics of malvin production in grapes. No, wait, don’t go, it’s actually kind of interesting.
- Prof. Bryant summarizes Annals of Botany papers on lotus pollination, salt/drought tolerance in Atriplex and pre-harvest sprouting in sorghum. ABA seems to be involved in everything.
Indications of failure
A group of over 20 biodiversity experts from a slew of international conservation agencies have a paper out in Science bemoaning the state of the biodiversity indicators agreed in 2006. ((Walpole, M., Almond, R., Besancon, C., Butchart, S., Campbell-Lendrum, D., Carr, G., Collen, B., Collette, L., Davidson, N., Dulloo, E., Fazel, A., Galloway, J., Gill, M., Goverse, T., Hockings, M., Leaman, D., Morgan, D., Revenga, C., Rickwood, C., Schutyser, F., Simons, S., Stattersfield, A., Tyrrell, T., Vie, J., & Zimsky, M. (2009). Tracking Progress Toward the 2010 Biodiversity Target and Beyond Science, 325 (5947), 1503-1504 DOI: 10.1126/science.1175466)) These indicators are important because they are supposed to be used to track progress towards fulfillment of the promise made by Parties under the Convention on Biological Diversity to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. They have also been incorporated into the Millennium Development Goals.
The authors point to problems with the “availability, consistency, and relevance” of data on even the indicators that are reasonably well-developed at the global scale. Some indicators — 5 of the 22 — “are not being developed at a global scale” at all, such as the one on access and benefit sharing. ((It occurs to me that, with the International Treaty in place, at least the agricultural biodiversity community has a pretty solid, ready-made indicator for ABS. But consider that “are not being developed” for a minute. Aren’t the authors’ organizations supposed to be leading the development of these indicators? What am I missing here? Is the paper a coded plea for less political interference?)) The next Conference of the Parties of the CBD (which meets in Japan in October 2010) “will review progress and agree on a new set of targets and a revised indicator framework.”
I hope one of the things it will consider in the new set of targets is crop genetic erosion. There are currently two indicators under the “Trends in genetic erosion” rubric, covering ex situ crop collections and livestock diversity respectively. Here’s what the indicators website has to say about the ex situ collections indicator:
Currently, studies are being undertaken to measure the dynamics of genetic diversity of collections from selected genebanks (EURISCO, USDA, SINGER, ICRISAT and CIAT), in order to develop a model to be applied more systematically worldwide. Based on data from these sources, the evolution over time in quantitative and qualitative terms (number of species; number of accessions/species; geographic origin and distribution of newly added accession versus existing ones) of collected samples was investigated.
I’m ashamed to say I know no more about it than that, but will try to find out the latest. Or maybe someone out there can bring us up to date. Anyway, there is no indicator that I can see on trend of genetic diversity in farmers’ fields, although there is one on sustainable management of agroecosystems.
We all know this is a fraught subject, not least politically, and we should perhaps be grateful that there is anything at all on agrobiodiversity among the indicators ((A tribute to our friends at Bioversity International and FAO, no doubt.)), but we cannot go on quoting at best anecdotal, at worst dubious, figures on loss of crop diversity and expect to be taken seriously. To say, as the authors of the Science paper do, that
…indicators of genetic biodiversity are slowly being compiled for domesticated and cultivated varieties but not yet for wild relatives.
is frankly not hugely reassuring.
The Economist economizes on the truth about plant breeding
There is a puzzling paragraph in the latest issue of The Economist. Well actually there’s a lot of puzzling paragraphs in the latest Economist, but the one I’m talking about is not in the finance or economics sections. And it is puzzling not so much because of what it says, but because of what it leaves out. Here it is in full. It appears in an article on the effect of climate change on developing countries.
This kind of increasing unpredictability would be dire news at the best of times: hit by drought and flood, the land becomes less productive. It is compounded by another problem. The higher-yielding, pest-resistant seed varieties invented in the 1960s were designed to thrive in stable climes. Old-fashioned seeds are actually better at dealing with variable weather—but are now less widely used. Reinstituting their use will mean less food.
What follows is a long paragraph which starts by saying that “[i]n India the gains from the Green Revolution are already shrinking because of local pollution, global warming and waning resistance to pests and disease…” and ends by quoting a World Bank study to the effect that because of climate change and population growth agricultural productivity will have to rise by 1.8% per annum for the foreseeable future. But there’s nothing in between, or indeed anywhere else in the article, about the importance of plant breeding in ensuring that increased productivity.
Now, many people see the value of moving landraces (or “old-fashioned seeds,” if you must) around, in particular from hot places to ones which are not so hot now but will soon be, for evaluation purposes — and more. And there may be some sense in which landraces are “better at dealing with variable weather” than modern varieties. But I don’t think anyone is seriously contemplating “reinstituting their use” on a massive scale in an effort to adapt agriculture to climate change.
What is needed — and urgently — if adaptation is to have much of a chance is effective breeding programmes, and landraces will be one of the sources of genetic material that these programmes will require, along with crop wild relatives and others. Shame The Economist didn’t say that more clearly.
“Conservation for a New Era” highlights crop wild relatives
As I just nibbled, IUCN’s book Conservation for a New Era is out. It
…outlines the critical issues facing us in the 21st century, developed from the results of last year’s World Conservation Congress in Barcelona.
You can download the pdf. Agriculture has a chapter all to itself, starting on page 160. It’s nicely balanced, and worth reading in full.
If we hope to maintain global biodiversity and a reasonable balance between people and the rest of nature, then agriculture needs to be part of the conversation.
On the other hand, conservation has much to contribute to sustainable agriculture.
The high point for me was the stuff on crop wild relatives (and indeed livestock wild relatives), in particular their potential role in breeding for climate change adaptation. Genebanks are mentioned in passing, but the specific need for ex situ conservation in the context of a rapidly changing environment is not, alas, highlighted. Crop improvement is recognized as a key response to climate change, but perhaps the link to diversity is not as explicit as might have been warranted.
Effective responses to climate change will require changing varieties, modifying management of soils and water, and developing new strategies for pest management as species of wild pests, their natural predators, and their life-cycles alter in response to changing climates.
I liked the paragraph on the role of agrobiodiversity in plant protection, though it missed a trick in not mentioning the importance of the genetic diversity of the crops themselves. There is the expected reference to multi-storey agroforestry systems, but also less-expected mentions of perennial crops and underutilized crops. There’s sensible stuff on biofuels, too (though not much in the agriculture chapter, actually).
So, a step forward in the integration of agriculture and agrobiodiversity into the global conservation agenda? I think so, though it could have been a bigger one. At least agriculture seems not to be seen exclusively as The Enemy.
NGO deconstructs World Seed Conference
This is interesting. Robin Willoughby, Research Officer at Share the World’s Resources (STWR), “an NGO advocating for sustainable economics to end global poverty,” starts his piece in Counterpunch in pretty conventional NGO mode. I don’t know anything about STWR, but the rhetoric is familiar. Taking the recently-ended World Seed Conference and its perceived endorsement of “techno-fixes and monopoly control” as his starting point, Willoughby goes on to say that:
In order to protect biodiversity, adapt to climate change and promote food security, policy-makers must allow farmers to freely save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds in developing countries.
Right. However, he does then go off in an unusual direction.
On the ground, examples such as the Navdanya project in India illustrate the benefits of both storing and sharing seeds as well as the benefits in food security and genetic diversity by allowing open-access to plant genetic resources. Organisations in the global farmers’ movement La Via Campesina also point the way to an alternative agricultural paradigm based on cooperation and reciprocity. In the UK, the Millennium Seed Bank Project at Kew Gardens further illustrates the importance and possibility of the collection, research and development of seeds for the public good. Countries such as Venezuela are also establishing cross-border collaboration and sharing of knowledge on the breeding of plants based on cooperation and for mutual benefit.
What? So, not just sharing of farm-saved seeds to adapt to climate change, then, but “development of seeds” and “breeding of plants.” And genebanks involved in the whole thing. As I say, interesting. Or am I seeing things?