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Blue bananas

Ripe bananas are of course yellow. However, under black light, the yellow bananas are bright blue, as discovered by scientists at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) and Columbia University (New York, USA). The team, headed by Bernhard Kräutler, reports in the journal Angewandte Chemie that the blue glow is connected to the degradation of chlorophyll that occurs during ripening. In this process, colorless but fluorescing breakdown products of chlorophyll are concentrated in the banana peel.

I kid you not.

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Rethinking the Resurrection Initiative

EurekAlert! had a piece about the Resurrection Initiative a couple of days back:

While an international seed bank in a Norwegian island has been gathering news about its agricultural collection, a group of U.S. scientists has just published an article outlining a different kind of seed bank, one that proposes the gathering of wild species — at intervals in the future — effectively capturing evolution in action.

I guess the idea is worthy enough, but the article is unfortunately full of misconceptions about genebanks. I’ll just highlight the most egregious.

“In contrast to existing seed banks, which exist primarily for conservation, this collection would be for research that would allow a greater understanding of evolution,” said Franks.

Really? That will come as a surprise to all the breeders and other users of genebank materials.

“Typically, seed banks are focused on the preservation of agricultural species or other plant species of strong economic interest, say, forest species, forest trees,” said Mazer. This is to make sure that scientists can maintain a genetically diverse seed pool in the event of some kind of ecological calamity that requires the replenishing of seeds from a certain part of the world or from certain species.

Well, while it is true that most seedbanks concentrate on crops, they do also maintain samples of wild relatives of crops, though probably not nearly enough, and of wild forages. And there are major genebanks — such as the Millennium Genebank at Kew — which conserve only wild species. But it’s the second part of the quote that is perhaps most surprising. Although genebank materials have indeed been used in restoration, surely their most common use is as sources of genes for breeding programmes.

“The approach that we would use is not simply to collect seeds over various time intervals and to archive them, but in the future to raise them in a common environment comparing seeds that were collected in 2010, 2030, and 2050, for example,” said Mazer. “If we found, for example, that the plants that come from seeds that were collected 50 years from now flower much earlier than those that were collected today, we could logically infer that natural selection over 50 years had favored plants, that is genotypes that flowered earlier and earlier, relative to those that delayed flowering.”

That makes it sound as if genebankers never do any characterization and evaluation of their holdings. Raising seeds in a common environment is in fact a standard genebank operation.

Don’t get me wrong, repeated collecting of the same population is an interesting thing to do. We don’t have enough hard data on genetic change. It has in fact been done even for agricultural species, though not on the systematic basis proposed here. I’ve done it myself, revisiting southern Algerian oases from whence wheat had been collected 10 years before, for example. But to suggest that a different kind of genebank is needed to accomodate such an initiative is stretching it. Let’s make sure we are making effective use of the genebanks we already have. We’re having enough difficulty keeping those going on a sustainable basis.

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Pollinator decline has no effect on global yields

Nature is reporting on a study that shows that “bees and many other insects may be in decline almost everywhere — but agriculture that depends on pollinators has been surprisingly unaffected at the global scale”. I have not seen the original paper, and I doubt that I am competent to assess it. But the report in Nature is intriguing. Using the FAO’s comprehensive dataset, Alexandra Klein and her colleagues observe no difference in yield patterns between crops pollinated by insects and other crops. There are other comparisons too, but the bottom line seems to be that local declines in yield with declining pollinators are not mirrored globally.

That’s no reason to relax, though.

Klein says her findings do not necessarily negate that idea that the world is in the throes of a pollination crisis. The data might hide how farmers have adapted to the problem, she suggests.

Nature goes on to suggest that a threshold-based catastrophe ((In the technical sense.)) may be around the corner.

Anyone care to comment on Klein’s paper? Or has Nature got it entirely right?

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One seed at a time activism

I’ve been having an argy-bargy with Gary of Muck and Mystery over how best to achieve diversity in the seed supply. To polarize, he seems to think that government research in seed breeding for specialized markets, like organic growers, is evil and serves to undermine further the diversity that does exist. I believe that the biggest obstacle is regulation, especially in Europe, where everything not permitted is forbidden. In a recent comment, he said this:

Seed companies do not seek to prevent seed saving. That’s nonsense. Seed companies seek to provide better seed, so good that growers will buy them. This is as true for the smallest independent seed shop as for the huge commercial suppliers. Europe can buy seeds from the world. There’s this thing called the internet to find them and companies that deliver even the smallest packages for decent prices. If that is illegal, then you have identified the problem. The only problem. What’s more. if there are local landraces that those seed companies do not sell, they’d likely be interested in doing so if they had a market for them. Once they are available, growers in other places are sure to try them since their customers would pay for variety. If the people deal with one another without state mediation and control there will be no diversity problem.

There are bits of that I would definitely argue with, but rather than pour fuel on the fire, I’ll simply say that he does have one very good point. In Europe unregistered seeds may not be available locally but “this thing called the internet” does at least offer the opportunity to try things from elsewhere. OK, your package could be confiscated, but it might get through and then you’ve got something new to play with, especially if you know enough to save your own seed in future. There’s also a “Traveller’s Exemption” that allows Europeans returning from abroad to bring back five small packets of seeds unregistered in the EU.

In that spirit, I was happy to see, on the same day as Gary’s advice, a new post at Bishop’s Homegrown. Hip-Gnosis Seed Development List of Available Seed 2009 is just that. A list of the varieties that Alan Bishop is developing and that he’s making available to growers elsewhere. He explains it like this:

We continuously select (year round) for new adaptations, unique colors, and higher nutritional content as well as taste and performance in our seed crops. Many of our seeds are unique breeding lines that will allow the home gardener to select for what they like and need in their own unique micro-climate conditions as well as in taste and color. Hip-Gnosis Seed Development operates now as a unique collective of seed growers and plant breeders working and trading together on the homegrown goodness message board (http://alanbishop.proboards60.com) where many of our varieties can be traded and bartered for (both from us and from other members). As always, all of our seed is public domain property and as such should be traded and allowed to continue its regional expansions into new territories for new selections and strains. We openly encourage everyone to share these special seeds far and wide.

I’m sure he’d welcome some (more?) Europeans in there, to explore and work with Astronomy Domine sweetcorn, Jack White tomato or even Robert Johnson Mississippi Delta Burley Tobacco. ((Can you tell where Alan Bishop is coming from?))

Bishop is just one of the grower enthusiasts at work using ancient and creating modern diversity. There are others like him, not just in the US but in many other parts of the “developed” world. There are even some in Europe.

So yes, go ahead, order seeds over the internet, see what works for you, select and adapt your seeds, and spread them around.

I bet, though, that if Europeans were able to pursue diversity directly instead of through loopholes and over the internet, we would see a lot more of that kind of thing here.