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Food choices in the future

Glenn, in a comment on Luigi’s wheat heat post, has this to say:

The question about whether to change crops or change varieties needs more attention. There is an institutional inertia, such that CIMMYT would never suggest changing crops. Nor would any other commodity center since they have a vested interest in R+D oriented towards changing varieties. Agricultural biodiversity proponents would also seem to have a conflict of interest. If you could just change crops, the diversity within a crop may not be so important. I don’t believe that, but it would seem that some research on changing varieties or changing crops would be useful.

I think this is a very interesting and important point. (I disagree with the notion that proponents of agrobiodiversity aren’t interested, because diversity will remain important, but that’s a separate issue.) We are forever hearing that X people don’t eat Y, and to a certain extent that is true. The Bengal Famine of 1943 is often trotted out as the canonical example, when rice-eaters starved rather than eat wheat (though the story is definitely a lot more complicated than that). But world history is also absolutely full of counterexamples. Italians, for example, don’t like to be told that their pomodori, peperoncini, fagioli are Johnny-come-latelies to these shores, but they are. And then there’s the way maize and the potato swept all before them. We need to know more about the anthropology of diet and how people do indeed make the choice to adopt new staples and new condiments.

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Wheat and climate change

ResearchBlogging.orgA review paper in the latest Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment looks at what climate change will do to wheat, and what can be done about it. ((ORTIZ, R. et al. (2008). Climate change: Can wheat beat the heat?. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. DOI: 10.1016/j.agee.2008.01.019)) The lead author is deputy director general at the International Centre for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT), and the picture he paints must be keeping him up at nights.

There are 12 different types of places where wheat is grown around the world — so-called “mega-environments.” They range from “high rainfall, hot” (e.g. in Bangladesh) to “low rainfall, severe cold” (around Ankara in Turkey). Some are better than others. One of the best is mega-environment 1, which amounts to 32 million hectares in northwest Mexico, the Indo-Gangetic Plains and the Nile Valley. It accounts for 15% of global wheat production, and it is in trouble.

When you look at the likely 2050 climate, half of the area of the Indo-Gangetic Plains which is now in mega-environment 1 might well need to be re-classified from pretty ideal low rainfall, irrigated, temperate to heat-stressed, short season. That is, conditions will look more like the Gezira in Sudan or Kano in Nigeria. That will reduce yields, affecting 200 million people.

So wheat breeders will have to develop varieties that can maintain yields under higher temperatures, unless you want farmers to switch to another crop entirely. Which might be the easiest thing in some places, actually, but that’s another story.

You can breed for resistance to an abiotic stress such as heat by growing a wide range of genotypes under that stress and looking for the highest yielding genotypes, of course. But what breeders at CIMMYT are now increasingly doing is trying to identify the different physiological attributes which are associated with high yield under stress conditions — things like leaf chlorophyll content during grain filling, for example. And then stacking them up together in new varieties. That’s had some success in breeding for drought resistance. Let’s hope — for the sake of Indian wheat farmers — that it works for heat too.

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Unconsidered, unbalanced, unreviewed ideas on local diversity

I do not write as an authority in agriculture or as a geneticist but nothing beats experience!

Of course, if I were into the whole brevity thing I’d just say that Adyeri Kanyaihe is pro locally adapted varieties. In an article on “Uganda’s leading website” Kanyaihe extolls the virtues, as he or she perceives them, of “indigenous seeds”. And to be honest, there’s not a lot wrong with the reasoning Kanyaihe exhibits. But don’t take my word for it. Pop on over to The New Vision and read about the tiny tasty tomato that thrives on hardship.

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Snap a spud, win big

The International Year of the Potato has announced a photographic competition, with big prizes to be won. Details are at the IYP web site, which also sets out all the rules and stuff. I find two things about the competition interesting. Closing date is 1 September 2008. For many places, that means you’ve either already taken the photograph, or you have no plans to photograph a maincrop harvest. And the prizes for professionals — “(people who make their living from photography)” — are bigger than those for amateurs. That doesn’t seem quite right. The competition is supported by Nikon.

And that reminds me, it’s time we wrapped up our own competition …

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What do you get when you cross a zoo with a seed company foundation?

I’ve no idea, but I’ll be watching this one with interest:

The San Diego Zoo’s Beckman Center for Conservation and Research is teaming teams up with the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians to create a unique effort sponsored by The Burpee Foundation to restore and revitalize the tribe’s traditional ecological knowledge of native plants and their uses. The partnership, called Burpee’s Native Seeds for Native Americans Program, will join the expertise of scientists from the San Diego Zoo with the experience and knowledge of tribal members, to create outreach efforts that educate and empower tribal youth about their cultural and environmental heritage.

That’s a world class zoo and a world class seed company getting together to use their facilities and expertise to preserve useful plants and the knowledge that goes with them. Too good to be true? I hope not.