Policy

February 28, 2020February 28, 2020

Looking past 2020

The CBD’s Open-Ended Working Group on the post-2020 biodiversity framework (i.e., what happens after the Aichi Targets) has been meeting this week in Rome to discuss what they call their “Zero Draft.” You can read that on the CBD website, along with its appendix on how to monitor progress (i.e. goals and indicators). As ever, IISD does a great job of summarizing the sessions, and the corridor talk.

Why is this important to agriculture? Well, because in 2018 the fourteenth meeting of its Conference of Parties in Sharm el-Sheikh said that the work of the CBD after 2020 needed to be as inclusive and global as possible. That means the framework had to address the particular concerns of all the different sectors, including agriculture.

Yeah, but why is that even a thing? Surely conservation of agricultural biodiversity is just the same as conservation of other biodiversity. Actually, not so much. And if you want a very concise explanation of the difference, and a nice summary of the state of the negotiations to boot, you could do a lot worse than watch this interview with Kent Nnadozie, Secretary of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. It’s on the CBD’s Facebook page, so I’m not entirely sure if everyone will be able — or willing — to see it. If that includes you, let me know and I’ll see if I can think of a way around it. ((Maybe my YouTube is better for you?)).

Spoiler alert: it’s the use.

February 27, 2020February 27, 2020

Final word on One CGIAR viewpoints

Ok, let’s recap. Food Policy put out a sort of special issue, or rather special section of its latest issue, entitled On Research Strategy for the new ‘One CGIAR’. It consists of an editorial plus 5 “viewpoint” papers. They’re all behind paywalls. I first just saw the one by Dr David Lobell, and wrote a bit about it here. Then I saw the ones by Drs Rebecca Nelson and Lawrence Haddad, and wrote about them.

It was then that I finally twigged to the scale of the thing, and saw the two remaining pieces. Actually it was thanks to a Twitter exchange, but maybe that’s another story. One of the viewpoints I missed is by Dr Pedro Sanchez, who basically says that CGIAR should focus more on nutrient-rich foods, both plant- and animal-based, which is congruent with the others in highlighting the importance of agricultural biodiversity without actually mentioning it, let alone genebanks. The second is by a group of 6 Cornell researchers, and they summarize their recommendations as follows, and I quote:

One CGIAR must cooperate and collaborate with multiple international partners.

One CGIAR must build regional capacity and training in cooperation with NARIs.

Working environments at the One CGIAR must address researchers’ work-life issues.

One CGIAR requires research strategies that are policy-relevant and proven to work.

One CGIAR must lead in advocating for and communicating about science.

Which I can’t really distinguish from what’s happening at the moment, except maybe in terms of quantity, but anyway.

Still waiting for reactions, in particular from NARIs. Go for it below…

February 26, 2020February 28, 2020

Nibbles: Innovation, CWR, Pathogens, Forage, Phenotyping

Innovations for sustainable food systems: genebanks are in there but frankly I find the whole thing a bit problematic. Just gonna leave that there. Feel free to comment here.
Colin Khoury’s backstory. Also some CWR.
The fight against pathogens. Of plants, settle down.
Better Napier grass is good for everyone. Including the cows. But wait, “…[i]t doesn’t really matter which grass…”
Phenome2020 recapped.

February 18, 2020February 19, 2020

Nibbles: Trade & nutrition, Apple trifecta, Cider, Neolithic migrations, IIED double

Getting trade to contribute to nutrition. Hard row to hoe.
Elegiac introduction & postscript by Robert Macfarlane to a fabulous pean to wild Kazakhstan apples by the late, great Roger Deakin called East to Eden.
And the connection between the above and “wild” apples in Scotland.
An expensive poster showing how domesticated apple varieties relate to each other. I have to say I’m sorely tempted.
Sorely tempted by this documentary on some cidermakers’ trip to Kazakhstan too.
Nice to see my map of barley genebank accessions used in a blog post about mapping human DNA phylogenies.
Your regular reminder that “PCLG is an international network of organisations coordinated by IIED that promotes learning on the linkages between people and biodiversity conservation” and that their newsletter is well worth subscribing too.
And here are IIED’s best publications of 2019, including “Biodiversity loss is a development issue,” which is one of the great titles of our time, and not a bad paper either.

February 17, 2020February 17, 2020

Brainfood: Ethiopian ABS, Horse double, Grapevine double, Naked barley, Sub clover diversity, Soybean diversity, USDA sorghum, Chicken diversity double, VAM, Oz wild rice

Against the grain? A historical institutional analysis of access governance of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture in Ethiopia. Culture, economics and politics.
Early Pastoral Economies and Herding Transitions in Eastern Eurasia. Everything changed around 1200 BC. Starting in Mongolia.
Genetic diversity within and between British and Irish breeds: The maternal and paternal history of native ponies. Diversity within breeds being maintained, global haplotypes well represented, but a couple of breeds pretty unique. Long way from Mongolia.
Diversity buffers winegrowing regions from climate change losses. Gotta change your cultivars.
Contribution de la biodiversité à l’éco-oenotourisme des vignobles héroïques: atouts et perspectives. You can’t change your cultivars.
Marker-assisted selection in a global barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. vulgare) collection revealed a unique genetic determinant of the naked barley controlled by the nud locus. One genetic variant, from East Asia, makes barley naked.
Morphological diversity within a core collection of subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum L.): Lessons in pasture adaptation from the wild. The Australian cultivars have similar morphological diversity to the core collection, and several morphological characters are probably adaptive.
Genome-wide genetic diversity is maintained through decades of soybean breeding in Canada. After an initial decline, though, and there’s more out there.
Evaluation of genetic diversity, agronomic traits, and anthracnose resistance in the NPGS Sudan Sorghum Core collection. 10% country subset of a 10% core subset of >40,000 accessions contains multiple anthracnose resistance sources, and lots of other diversity.
Phylogeny and conservation priority assessment of Asian domestic chicken genetic resources. 7 clades, 3 centres of origin, northern Yunnan the highest priority for conservation.
European and Asian contribution to the genetic diversity of mainland South American chickens. Alas, no evidence of a pre-Columbian Polynesian contribution. Yunnan, that’s another story.
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi affect the concentration and distribution of nutrients in the grain differently in barley compared with wheat. Differently as in opposite directions.
Molecular and Morphological Divergence of Australian Wild Rice. Including a putative new taxon.