Threats

September 14, 2012September 14, 2012

Taro help is at hand

It was a couple of years ago that we started talking about the arrival of taro leaf blight in West Africa, and the possible role that resistant material from the Pacific might have in averting a catastrophe. Well:

On 21 August 2012, help came with the arrival of breeders’ lines from Samoa and PNG and varieties from countries in Asia.

We will be following their progress with much interest.

September 13, 2012September 13, 2012

A couple of CWRs on the brink

The Top 100 Threatened Species list just released by IUCN, including in a nifty online booklet with nice photos, includes two crop wild relatives: Dioscorea strydomiana from South Africa and Lathyrus belinensis from Turkey. The yam is down to 250 plants and is threatened by harvesting, the vetch down to 1,000, with building work encroaching the population. But in both cases, there is seed conserved ex situ. Surely there are some CWRs that are more threatened than that? Maybe even some wild tomatoes.

September 12, 2012September 12, 2012

Nibbles: Red List, Açaí, Edible forest, Horticulture, Heirloom seed bank, Malnutrition journal, Tea breeding, Speak!

Can cultivated species get their own Red List? Stefano Padulosi asks the tough questions.
Açaí: could the wonder fruit also be wonderful for forests? CIFOR asks the tough questions.
And more: You mean you can eat that?
Horticulture has rock stars? My turn to ask the tough questions.
Ok, so what US county is “…a hotbed of diversified, small-scale organic, natural processed food production”? Maybe not so tough.
Will there be a follow-up to Lancet’s 2008 series on malnutrition? That’s an easy one.
Luigi’s mother-in-law asks: Where can I get my hands on that drought-resistant tea?
Got any other questions? World Wide Views on Biodiversity wants to hear from you, this Saturday. (Answers too, I suppose.)

September 11, 2012September 11, 2012

IUCN and Microsoft map threats to biodiversity

“We’re building an application that allows people to map those threats spatially,” Joppa explains. “We’re trying to provide a repository of evidence for threats to species.”

Lucas Joppa is talking about a collaboration between Microsoft and IUCN to map threats to biodiversity. Worth keeping an eye on. But I wonder if they’ll consider agrobiodiversity too. If so, we have some ideas here at the blog. Anyway, presumably the thing will link up with GeoCAT in some clever way.

LATER: And also link to this? Or at least suck in the data?

September 10, 2012September 10, 2012

Brainfood: Wild soybean, Leafy vegetables collection gaps, Banana drought tolerance screening, Chinese soybean breeding, Malagasy coffee collections, Bacteria on beans

Perennial Glycine: A new source of genetic diversity for soybean improvement. The perennial wild species are genetically and geographically distant from the crop, but at least one can be crossed, with some difficulty, and some potentially useful genes have been enticed to make their way into the cultivated genome. To no great effect, but it’s early days yet.
Genetic resources collections of leafy vegetables (lettuce, spinach, chicory, artichoke, asparagus, lamb’s lettuce, rhubarb and rocket salad): composition and gaps. You can just read the collecting priorities for each genepool, or analyze the data yourself.
Screening the banana biodiversity for drought tolerance: can an in vitro growth model and proteomics be used as a tool to discover tolerant varieties and understand homeostasis? Maybe.
Development of yield and some photosynthetic characteristics during 82 years of genetic improvement of soybean genotypes in northeast China. Yield doubled, but at the cost of water use efficiency. Maybe those perennials could help?
An assessment of the genetic integrity of ex situ germplasm collections of three endangered species of Coffea from Madagascar: implications for the management of field germplasm collections. For 3 wild species, there’s lots of genetic diversity in field genebanks, but also lots of crossing with other species.
Diversity of culturable bacteria and occurrence of phytopathogenic species in bean seeds (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) preserved in a germplasm bank. “…the fact that potentially phytopathogenic bacteria have been preserved in a genebank should emphasize the importance of rigorous sanitary controls for plant genetic resources.” You think?