Category: Wild relatives

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Reflections on Barcelona

Danny Hunter has some thoughts on whether IUCN takes agricultural biodiversity seriously over at his Rurality blog. IUCN has been meeting in Barcelona, and Danny was there telling everyone about the Crop Wild Relative Global Portal. The money quote:

There still appears to be a massive disconnect between the global conservation and agrobiodiversity communities.

LATER: There is, of course, no consideration of agriculture in the latest work on Key Biodiversity Areas, apart, that is, from seeing it as a threat.

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Disappearing wild potatoes mined for drought tolerance

An article in National Geographic looks at possible changes in the climate of the Andes, how they will affect potatoes, and what breeders are doing about it. The wild relatives are very much to the fore:

“The crosses we are developing between wild, drought-tolerant varieties and modern potatoes now are for the future,” said Meredith Bonierbale, senior potato breeder at the International Potato Center in Lima.

The article also quotes our friend, colleague and occasional contributor Andy Jarvis, ((Andy works for CIAT and Bioversity in Cali, Colombia.)) who recently collaborated with others on a paper which concluded that some of those very same wild relatives are themselves threatened:

“Even if we halt habitat loss, in the next 50 years, climate change could undo all of the conservation that we already have,” said Jarvis.