Category: Threats

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Another threatened Russian fruit collection

…a commission ordered that the land of the academy be transitioned for the destruction of educational buildings and living, agricultural fields, in order to establish the new development and construction of multi-level residential buildings.

Sound familiar? No, not Pavlovsk, but another famous Russian agricultural icon, Moscow’s Timiryazev Agricultural Academy.

…part of the land, Michurin’s orchard, was founded in 1939 and includes an extensive collection of fruit and berry biodiversity. The orchard is dedicated to the protection of unique plant varieties, which could not be transplanted without causing a dramatic loss. Nearly 200 apple varieties and 167 varieties of pears still flourish on this parcel. Apart from the historic and educational value of the land, it is also a national heritage, as granted by President Medvedev in 2008.

There’s a petition. Remember: pressure worked with Pavlovsk.

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Brainfood: IPR in breeding, Cryo costs, Undervalued spp, Biodiversity change drivers, Cassava proteins, Sorghum seed sources

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Nibbles: BananaGuard, Wheat has a blast, Grow your own antibiotic, Bhutanese cypress, Natural history collections, Genebanks big & small, Better grasslands, Local foodways

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Oil lamp at the end of the tunnel?

Not a short-term solution, clearly, but it might be worthwhile starting to screen the larger collections, surely.

That’s what we said almost a year ago when the bacterium Xylella started wreaking havoc in the olive groves of Puglia, the heel of Italy. Well, it’s not a large collections of olives that’s been screened, but there are glimmers of hope in the recent report of an ongoing study looking at the results of both artificial inoculation and natural infection. Here’s the guy in charge, Giuseppe Stancanelli, as quoted by the BBC:

“…some varieties have shown some tolerance. They grow in infected orchards but do not show strong symptoms, as seen in more susceptible varieties. They are still infected by the inoculation but this infection is much slower so it takes longer for the infection to spread, and the concentration of the bacterium in the plant is much lower. This shows the potential for different responses (to the pathogen) in different varieties.”

It’s early days yet, and only about 10 varieties were looked at, but Leccino, for example, sounds like it might be showing promise. That’s a very common and widespread cultivar, so olive cultivation in a large part of Italy may well survive ok should the disease spread. Well, until the next disease, that is.

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Lethal yellowing spreads in West Africa

Readers may remember our recent post on the threat to the international coconut collection in Papua New Guinea that is being posed by a new disease. Now it looks like an old disease, lethal yellowing, is likewise making strides towards another important international coconut genebank, that in Cote d’Ivoire…

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…quite apart from affecting the livelihoods of an increasing number of farmers who can hardly afford the hit. See the video by Rouland Bourdeix for more details.