The New York Times picked up the Bees in Peril story and amplified it considerably. More interesting still, over at Resilience Science Garry Peterson points out that maybe the decline in pollinators is linked to the fact that introduced European bees have displaced natural populations to such an extent, and that the bees are now more genetically uniform. Sounds like he could be right.
Very diverse barley discovered … and already under threat?
SciDev.net reports on a paper in Theoretical and Applied Genetics that identifies the world’s most genetically diverse barley varieties. SciDev.net and other press reports focus on the high diversity of the barleys, found growing in farmers’ fields around the captial city of Asmara in Eritrea, as a source of potentially valuable material for improving tropical varieties worldwide. They point out, too, that the populations are threatened by urban development and that Eritrea has no genebank in which to protect them. But does Eritrea really need its own genebank, or have they more pressing priorities? A researcher from ICARDA, which has a perfectly serviceable genebank, was on the team. The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture guarantees free access to the material if stored there. Eritrea was one of the first signatories of the Treaty. What’s the problem?
More interesting, perhaps, is a part of the paper that the reports I read neglected to mention. The molecular analysis indicates that the Horn of Africa may be where barley was first domesticated. That honour usually goes to the Fertile Crescent, with the Horn a “secondary centre of diversity”. But Eritrean and Ethiopian barley may actually have been domesticated independently.
Crop wild relatives underused
Are crop wild relatives (CWR) more trouble than they’re worth? There are certainly significant challenges involved in including them in breeding programmes, but you’d have thought that between the new molecular tools that are now out there, the greater numbers of CWR accessions in genebanks, and all the information about how useful CWRs can be, breeders would be falling over themselves to make those kinky inter-specific crosses. Well, according to a major review by our friends at Bioversity International (the outfit formerly known as the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute), the use of CWRs in breeding programmes has been steadily increasing in the past 20 years, but probably not as much as might have been expected. There’s been a number of papers recently on CWRs. This paper, also from Bioversity, looks at in situ conservation of CWR. Check out this for a discussion on the definition of the term, and, from some of the same people, there’s this overview of conservation and use of CWR, using a specific example. Here’s an example of conservation assessment and priority-setting for the wild relatives of the peanut. For a discussion of the possible effects of climate change on these species, see this.
The marula and the elephant
The sweet, juicy fruits of the marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea) are widely eaten in the miombo woodlands of southern Africa, and are also used to make the delicious Amarula Cream liqueur. But it’s not just people who like them: elephants will walk a long way for a marula feast. This piece looks at some of the evolutionary consequences.
Sandalwood in danger
For some reason or other, there’s been a lot in the news lately here in Kenya about sandalwood and its over-exploitation. There was a piece in the TV evening news just the other day when a huge consignment of the stuff was found in a warehouse owned by an MP. Now here’s an article from The Nation, reproduced by the excellent allAfrica.com.