Category: Threats

Posted on

An Atlas of Global Conservation goes (partially) online

The Nature Conservancy is publishing an Atlas of Global Conservation . 1 Some of the maps are online, though not the one below, which I got from a slideshow over at the Washington Post accompanying an article on the atlas.

Why not, though? Surely, if someone is really going to buy the hardcopy version, they are not going to be put off by the fact that all the maps are on the internet. I left a comment to that effect on the Conservancy’s Facebook post announcing the atlas, and they very kindly got back to me saying that more maps will indeed eventually be made available online.

What’s that you say? Any agriculture? A map of centres of crop diversity to go with the above? The list of data sources is not encouraging. But I could be wrong. I’ll keep you posted.

Posted on

Nibbles: Aubergines, Opuntia, Amazonian ag, Kenya, Swiflets, Coconut and Web 2.0, PROTA, Mexico, Fruit wild relatives

Posted on

Nibbles: Asses, Mapping pathogens, Oysters, Tea, Turkish biodiversity hotspot, Dolmades and sage, Yams festival, Pollen video, Agriculture and mitigation, Rarity, School feeding, Sheep

Posted on

Costs, benefits, and the search for disease resistance

An epidemic of Fusarium head blight swept through the United states between 1998 and 2000, costing the wheat industry an estimated US$ 2.7 billion. That’s right: billion.

Salvation came from Chinese and Japanese landraces, especially a Chinese wheat called Sumai 3. To prepare for the inevitable mutation of the fungus, scientists at the USDA have broadened their search for resistance. They examined 87 Asian varieties of wheat, many of them old landraces, and found good levels of resistance in 26 of them. Better yet, some of the resistance genes seem to be different from the ones derived from Sumai 3, which means that they might offer protection against different varieties of the fungus.

Just knowing that various resistance genes exist, and having markers to select more resistant crosses from breeding efforts means that future outbreaks can probably be more effectively dealt with, which is reassuring. More to the point, for our purposes, this research raises again the question: how can anyone doubt the value of genebanks? Just one disease cost just one country US$2.7 billion over three years. Genebank accessions contain the solutions. Do you really need to know the cost of every accession to decide whether genebanks are worthwhile?