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UG99: The Phantom Menace?

Star_Wars_phantom_menace_sith.jpg Very good news from the United States Department of Agriculture. Breeders are about to release the first wheat lines that incorporate several genes for resistance to UG99, the new race of rust fungus that threatens wheat worldwide. One line will be available to growers on the east coast of the US. All will be available to breeders worldwide to develop new varieties adapted to local conditions.

Part of the effort leading to the new wheats has been a screening of more than 5000 accessions from several genebanks. One outcome of this massive evaluation exercise has been the discovery that UG99 had overcome many more resistance genes than original estimates. That’s why it has been important to pyramid several resistance genes into the new varieties. Just where those resistance genes came from I don’t know. But the USDA does say that the breeders “also will develop new sources of genetic resistance to rusts from three wild relatives of wheat”.

Good luck to them. Certainly the wheat farmers of Iran, ((I cannot resist a quick aside. At the FAO high-level meeting a couple of weeks ago one of the Iranian delegates dropped by my stall. I struck up a conversation.

Was he worried about UG99?
No, our scientists can control it.
Really? Where can I find out more?
They have communicated with the Authorities.
Really? Where can I find out more?

And so it went, with neither of us making much progress, and I was reminded mostly of the golden age of Stalinist genetics, an oxymoron if ever there was one.)) Pakistan, Afghanistan and northern India — the current front in the fight against UG99 — need all the help they can get. But a tiny part of me really rather hopes that the new varieties are not in fact a success.

The world badly needs another demonstration of the power of pests and diseases to destroy food supplies and the importance of agricultural biodiversity to protect us from them. Southern corn blight is the poster child for the value of diversity.

annurev.jpg

That outbreak more or less created the modern move to conserve crop diversity in genebanks, a move that has lost its impetus as the world forgets that food security requires the ready availability of lots and lots of agricultural biodiversity.

So while I am truly glad that breeders are making progress against UG99, I’d also like to see UG99 make real inroads into the developed world’s wheat crops, just as a reminder, lest they forget. ((I stole the Sith from here. If it is copyrighted, I apologise. Contact me, and I’ll remove it.))

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Land of silk and honey

We’ve had another enquiry about silk-making in Kenya, which is one of our most commented-on stories, so I was prompted to go and look for more information. I hadn’t really taken in before that the reason the projects promote bees and silkworms together is that (some?) African silk moths eat the leaves of Acacias, whose flowers are a source of nectar for bees. Win-win.

Anyway, back to the search for further information. There really isn’t that much. Luigi had already pointed to UNDP’s project, which doesn’t look as if it has changed much since then. New Agriculturalist had an article on sericulture a little more than a year ago, Kambogo Women’s Group is raising silkworms and feeding them on mulberry leaves, somewhat different from the wild silkworms feeding on acacia that are the focus of UNDP and IFAD efforts in Mwingi District. I also turned up some rough TV news footage here; it is unedited and pretty blurry, but it gives a rough idea of some of the things being done.

IFAD’s funding seems to have ended in 2004. People in Kenya clearly want to know more. So why isn’t more information available? And just what is the current state of the silk business in Kenya?

One of our readers must know more. Share, please.

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Maybe bio-char does have a part to play

Terra preta is the very fertile black soil found mostly in parts of the Amazon basin, and believed to have been created by people mixing fine particles of charcoal and other stuff into the soil. A whole lot of voodoo has grown up around the subject, with unscrupulous charlatans, head in the sand naysayers and all manner of other life forms clustering around the idea. Some people think that one can create terra preta by adding bio-char to the soil, and that miracles will ensue.

I recently dumped on biofuels from a great height because in essence they are mining the soil. Doesn’t matter how slowly; at some point, the fun will have to stop. In the comments on that post, Karl and Anastasia weighed in by saying that bio-char, a potential residue after extracting bioenergy, could be returned to the land to close the loop. I dumped on that idea too.

Now I’m not so sure. Continue reading “Maybe bio-char does have a part to play”

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Fire threatens wild gourd…or maybe not

I’m ashamed to say that all Seminole names look alike to me. I know it’s a failing, and I’m trying to correct it. But, in the meantime, I could not help but be somewhat alarmed when I saw that a brush fire had destroyed a chunk of Okaloacoochee State Forest in Florida. That’s because I vaguely remembered a wild Cucurbita, endemic to Florida, with a very similar specific epithet. Well, it turned out to be an object lesson in the perils, and occasional advantages, of ignorance.

The wild cucurbit is actually Cucurbita okeechobeensis. And that’s the perils part, as “okeechobee” is actually not much like “okaloacoochee.” Pretty embarassing to confuse the two. But gbiffing Cucurbita okeechobeensis, and comparing its distribution with the location of Okaloacoochee State Forest, reveals the advantages part. For it turns out that Okeechobee gourd could well be found in or around the ravaged state forest (blue dots). It’s possible, anyway.

So a little learning can be a useful thing.

Now, I have no idea whether that brush fire actually destroyed, or even threatened, populations of this particular crop wild relative. Maybe someone will tell me. But the point I would like to make is that it would be nice to have a system whereby the locations of threats like fires, floods, new roads etc. could be automatically compared to a dataset of the distribution of crop wild relatives. Globally.

I don’t think technology is a problem. I did the whole thing in Google Earth. The bottleneck is a comprehensive global dataset of the locations (actual or predicted) of populations of crop wild relatives. Hopefully that’s what the CWR Portal will become in time.