Threats

October 16, 2012October 15, 2012

Saving rice from a truant monsoon

Forsaken by the rain gods, the tribal farmers in the district are now mounting a desperate attempt to salvage their wilting crop. What is at stake is not only their livelihood, but also the preservation of over a dozen rare and invaluable indigenous varieties of rice. If the attempt by these farmers doesn’t succeed, the state could lose many rice varieties for ever…

“These tribal farmers have been the sole saviours of the seeds of many indigenous and rare varieties of rice. They have been cultivating and saving them religiously despite suffering losses as these varieties have only half the yield when compared to hybrid ones…”

Well, maybe. But Jeerakashala, Navara, Adukkan, Thondi and Chomala are in fact in IRRI’s genebank, according to Genesys.

October 15, 2012October 12, 2012

Brainfood: Resistances, Seed networks, Medicinal plant protection, Pollinator knowledge gaps

Indirect Effect of a Transgenic Wheat on Aphids through Enhanced Powdery Mildew Resistance. Plants resistant to fungus have more aphids. Oh dear.
A case study of seed exchange networks and gene flow for barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. vulgare) in Morocco. There is more movement of material among villages than interviews suggest.
Evaluation of plant-derived products against pests and diseases of medicinal plants: A review. Extracts from some medicinal plants used to protect other medicinal plants.
Identifying key knowledge needs for evidence-based conservation of wild insect pollinators: a collaborative cross-sectoral exercise. Top one: How important is the diversity of pollinator species to the resilience and reliability of the pollination service? Seems a pretty good start.

October 10, 2012December 4, 2017

Nibbles: GRISP, Wheat for Africa, African ag, Future genebanks, GCARD, Zoonoses, Urban ag, Goat feed, ICRISAT breeding, Old corn & apples, Millets, Chocolate, Medlars, Yam beans, Black Sigatoka, CBD and ITPGRFA, Fish policy, Dog miscegenation

Global rice and wheat in Africa tweetfests going on. And speaking of Africa, IFPRI has a big report.
Speaking of rice, read about how our friends at IRRI are rethinking the genebank.
Speaking of tweetfests, GCARD promises to be one too. More than a conference!
From ILRI, who will no doubt be at GCARD, the downside of urban farming. And more doom and gloom.
Speaking of urban agriculture, RAFI has a big report. (Oh, and agriculture is not the only thing that can be peri-urban.)
Speaking of ILRI, this time in better mood, they’re feeding improved sweetpotato and cassava varieties to improved goat breeds.
Speaking of improved varieties, ICRISAT has them too, of millets and the like. And they came from the genebank. And they were made by breeders, who have a newsletter, did you know? This is coming up because of the CBD meeting in Hyderabad, on which more later…
Speaking of genebanks (the USDA ones in this case), it’s not only breeders who use them. (And speaking of USDA genebanks, here’s a story about the apple one.)
And speaking of millets, they’re magic!
Speaking of magic, that’s the only word for chocolate, isn’t it?
Speaking of painting yourself into a corner, do yam beans go with chocolate? No? Well, maybe medlars do.
Speaking of fruits (good catch!), Ecuadorians find disease resistance gene in Indian banana. Or at least banana named after Indian city.
And that, I suppose, is why you need multiple ABS regimes, despite the confusion that may cause in Hyderabad and elsewhere.
Speaking of ABS, interesting how that doesn’t really figure in fish policy discussions.
And finally, a propos of nothing in particular, news of an unusual wolf-dog hybrid.

October 8, 2012October 18, 2012

Brainfood: Host-pathogen genomics, Maize-teosinte system, Organic Europe meta-analysis, Food perceptions, Guanaco, Earthworms, Pea & powdery mildew, Pea drought tolerance, Butternut regeneration, Wild tomato salt tolerance, Germination & climate change, Medieval melons, Barley domestication, Rice origin, Livestock & wildlife, Niche modelling, Insects

A Population Genomics Perspective on the Emergence and Adaptation of New Plant Pathogens in Agro-Ecosystems. Crop diversity affects fungal diversity as much as the other way around. Actually more so, as fungal genomes are incredibly plastic.
Teosinte as a model system for population and ecological genomics. Genetics of speciation, hybridization, various evolutionary questions: all can usefully be looked at in the maize-teosinte system with cheap next-generation sequencing. Oh, and that can help us with crop improvement.
Does organic farming reduce environmental impacts? –- A meta-analysis of European research. Per unit area, yes. Per unit product, not always. Need to mix and match. Good luck with that.
“Healthy,” “diet,” or “hedonic”. How nutrition claims affect food-related perceptions and intake? If you tell people something is healthier, they believe it is, in fact, well, healthier.
Guanaco management by pastoralists in the Southern Andes. They can coexist with cattle.
Earthworms promote the reduction of Fusarium biomass and deoxynivalenol content in wheat straw under field conditions. Earthworms protect crops from pathogens.
Screening of pea germplasm for resistance to powdery mildew. 14 accessions from 10 countries are promising. That’s out of 700. Hard row to hoe.
Sources of high tolerance to salinity in pea (Pisum sativum L.). Out of some 780 accessions, China seems to be a hotspot, but the most tolerant accession was from Greece. Any overlap with the previous results?
A rare case of natural regeneration in butternut, a threatened forest tree, is parent and space limited. In situ is not enough. Not if you don’t help it along, anyway.
Relationship between survival and yield related traits in Solanum pimpinellifolium under salt stress. 2 accessions among a subset of over 90 from over 300 in the AVRDC collection show high survival and yield under stress. Would be interesting to know if the 90 were indeed well-chosen in the first place.
Climate warming could shift the timing of seed germination in alpine plants. Spring emergence will shift to autumn, but the bad effect will be on the seedlings.
Medieval emergence of sweet melons, Cucumis melo (Cucurbitaceae). Lexicography suggests that there were sweet melons in Central Asia early on, but they didn’t get to Iberia until the late 11th Century, and to the rest of Europe until the 15th. Climate and the clash of civilizations to blame, as ever.
Tibet is one of the centers of domestication of cultivated barley. The other being the Fertile Crescent. Some Chinese hulless and six-rowed barleys in particular are similar to Tibetan wild material. But are the authors stretching the data?
A map of rice genome variation reveals the origin of cultivated rice. Or origins. Japonica first domesticated from O. rufipogon in the middle Pearl River in Southern China, and indica is a hybrid of the first cultivars with local wild rice in South East and South Asia. But have we not heard this before? Ah, but this paper has more, better markers, no doubt. Anyway, compare and contrast with maize and barley above.
Lessons on the relationship between livestock husbandry and biodiversity from the Kenya Long-term Exclosure Experiment (KLEE). Livestock and wildlife can coexist, but you have to work at it. Bit like the guanaco thing, then?
Modeling plant species distributions under future climates: how fine-scale do climate projections need to be? Doesn’t matter for total extent, but actual locations of stable climates vary with scale. On average, “270 m is fine enough,” but it really depends on the species. Probably safest answer is “as fine as possible.”
Fertilisers and insect herbivores: a meta-analysis. Fertilizers good for insect numbers. Which means bad for plants? But insect diversity? Wonder what they do to those earthworms and fungi above…

October 2, 2012

Nibbles: Cacao breeding, Specialy crops, Taihu pigs

Breeding cacao in Ecuador.
Supporting specialty crops in the US.
Tasty Chinese piglets.