Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
A brief report on AllAfrica.com says that Ugandan scientists have released a new soybean variety known as MNG 8.10. The variety is resistant to a soybean rust (presumably not Asian soybean rust, or they’d be making a much bigger deal about it) and gives a yield of up to 2.5 tons per hectare.
That’s great news for the breeders and for Uganda’s soybean farmers. Just one churlish question; who will be eating the soybeans? Livestock in Uganda? Livestock in some other country? Or hungry Ugandans?
Maybe it was the discussion about apple varieties during the 60 Minutes piece on Svalbard:
…in the 1800s in the United States people were growing 7,100 named varieties of apples. 7,100 different varieties of apples that are catalogued,” Fowler explains.
“And how many are there today?” Pelley asks.
“We’ve lost about 6,800 of those, so the extinction rate for apples varieties in the United States is about 86 percent,” he explains.Â
More likely it was just the general interest in genebanks and crop diversity generated by the Svalbard phenomenon. In any case, it is great to see a mainstream publication like The Alantic Monthly waxing lyrical about apple conservation. Via The Fruit Blog.
Yes, yet another thematic trifecta. I swear I don’t go out looking for these, they just pop up every once in a while. CABI’s excellent blog had a piece today about CABI’s own fungal genetic resources collection and its value as a source of useful compounds. It includes Fleming’s original penicillin-producing strain so it does have form in that regard. Then Seeds Aside has a post on variation among olive varieties in a gene for an allergenic protein found on the pollen grain. And finally, over at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a thumbnail sketch of the redoubtable Phebe Lankester, who wrote extensively on both botany and health — and occasionally on the link between the two — in the latter part of the 19th century. ((Ann B. Shteir. (2004) “Lankester, Phebe (1825–1900).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/58526, accessed 10 April 2008].))
A couple of weeks back I alluded to problems in the thatching industry in the UK and linked to a piece by Danny at Rurality. Well, I put in the wrong link (now fixed), and anyway Danny’s post was pretty short and it was talking about an article that is not online. But never fear, if you’re really interested in the crisis in British thatching, you can read about it in the Telegraph. Or you can get the bullet-point version at Cronaca.
The latest issue of the Cambridge Alumni Magazine has a section on biodiversity conservation. Nothing at all on agrobiodiversity, alas, but a footnote did send me to an interesting video of Prof. William Sutherland talking about “evidence-based conservation.” ((Prof. Sutherland was also behind the article horizon-scanning biodiversity threats which we nibbled a few days back.)) He also says nothing specifically about the importance of conserving agricultural biodiversity — which is ironic given that the opening example in his talk concerns the nutritional importance of the fruit of a cultivated species — but I think his thesis is generally applicable. And that thesis is, paraphrasing somewhat, that there are too many meta-narratives in conservation and not enough data. ((Ok, that is itself a meta-narrative. Or a meta-meta-narrative? My head hurts.)) He’s put together a website where experimental evidence for and against the efficacy of specific interventions aimed at solving specific conservation problems can be documented and discussed.