Category: Threats

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Three good ideas

I think I have already pointed out that Nigel Chaffey does an entertaining round-up of botanically themed items from the world’s media on every issue of Annals of Botany. The latest one has three stories — on training, innovation and information — of great relevance to some of our recurring obsessions here at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog.

  • “Teaching Tools in Plant Biology is a new, online feature of The Plant Cell consisting of materials to help instructors teach plant biology courses. Each topic includes a short essay introducing the topic, with suggested further readings, and a PowerPoint lecture with handouts. The materials are peer reviewed by leaders in the field to ensure accuracy, like all material in The Plant Cell.” Anyone want to volunteer to do one on agrobiodiversity conservation?
  • InnoCentive, the global innovation marketplace, “where creative minds solve some of the world’s most important problems for cash awards up to $1 million,” is to tackle the problem of the European corn borer, though the solvers of this one get only $20,000, and must relinquish all intellectual property rights. Will be interesting to see if anyone bites. The deadline for submission just passed.
  • Annals of Botany is going to take part in a project “to establish whether content in various formats from disparate sources (e.g. literature from publishers and data from public databases) can be delivered to a central ‘knowledge brokering service’, which then makes the content machine-readable and allows key pieces of information to be extracted by data-mining approaches.” I really like this idea as a way of aggregating information on germplasm accessions, data from databases but also published results from papers etc.
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Goats in peril

A plea arrives from Australia, concerning the goats of Middle Percy Island, a paradisiacal spot off the coast of Queensland on the Great Barrier Reef. These goats, it seems, are the descendants of animals released on the islands 200 years ago to provision passing sailors. They still do. The thousands of “yachties” who drop anchor at Middle Percy each year could buy expertly tanned goat skins and stock up on goat stew (and other goodies) all prepared by the people who hold the lease on Middle Percy. In a few weeks, however, the lease is due to revert to Queensland’s Department of Environment and Resource Management. They have apparently threatened to cull all the goats (although there’s nothing about that on the DERM website) or maybe all the goats except those that can survive on 140 Ha of the island.

“These goats need to be protected or domesticated — not annihilated” says my informant. “They have lived in the tropics and have foraged for themselves for two centuries.” As a result, “the genetic heritage among this small goat population which, by its very isolation, could potentially be crucial in providing genetic traits to goat populations in tropical Third world countries in need of calcium” could vanish.

Is that true? I simply don’t know. The history and current status of Middle Percy Island is complicated enough without even bringing the goats on board. Get into the livestock and it becomes more complicated still. The first European explorer, Matthew Flinders, noted “no marsupials were inhabiting Middle Percy Island” when he was there in 1802, and he is believed to have left behind the first of the goats. Subsequently settlers on the island brought their own herds, probably Saanen and British Alpine types. In the 1920s a herd of 2000 sheep was established. And in 1996 a senior BBC producer noted sheep, kangaroos, a solitary emu and a small herd of Indian cattle in addition to the goats.

One of the current leaseholders says they “have identified a variety of different types of goat, which seem to breed true to form; Cashmere, Saanen, British-Alpine, Australian All-black the Melaan, and possibly Toggenburg and an All-brown goat.” It would indeed be interesting if all these types were maintaining their distinctive looks despite their freedom to choose their own mates.

Will the Department of Environment and Resource Management really try to annihilate all the interloper species, including fruits and vegetables and bees and poultry brought in to sustain the settlers? Or have they just got it in for the goats? Could the goats be managed to keep populations at a level low enough not to damage the environment? Would those population levels preserve the genetic diversity of the goats? And is that diversity important anyway?

Lots of questions, no answers. But at least the questions are now being asked, and if answers are forthcoming we’ll be sure to bring them into the conversation.

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Nibbles: Biofuels, No-till corn, BBTV, Coffee pest, Air potato, Neolithic, Turkish roses, Cowpea conference

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Hold the phone! It’s a seriously endangered crop wild relative

It has happened, and January not even over yet. The IUCN’s Red List Species of the Day, which we are privileged to feature in a little widget over there on the right, has hit paydirt with a crop wild relative: Apium bermejoi, which Wikipedia says is “closely related to the wild form of celery”. What are the chances that it could confer resistance to some of the many pests and diseases that celery is martyr to? One expert told us: “my feeling is that it has not been used in celery breeding to any effect”. Anyone know differently?

A. bermejoi seeds are in storage, although in the wild there may be fewer than 100 individuals hanging in there on the island of Menorca.

Its habitat is often trampled by passing fishermen and hikers, or more seriously disrupted by off-road motorcyclists. In addition, Apium bermejoi must compete with a wide variety of other plant species for essential water and nutrients. Its present decline seems to be related to a series of drier summers, showing that this species is very sensitive to climate change.

That’s a lot to cope with.