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The Value of Biodiversity to Food and Agriculture

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue of Biodiversity

The Value of Biodiversity to Food and Agriculture

To be released at the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD/COP9) in Bonn, Germany, 19-30 May 2008. The issue will coincide with the review of the Programme of work on Agricultural Biodiversity, as well as with the celebrations of the International Day for Biological Diversity on 22 May on the theme of Agriculture and Biodiversity. The following topics will be considered for publication: 

  • Biodiversity as the foundation for sustainable agriculture
  • Biodiversity and food (nutrition, traditional diets)
  • Soil biodiversity
  • Preservation of rare stocks
  • Indicators for agro-biodiversity
  • Value of taxonomy to biodiversity and agriculture
  • Pollination
  • Bio-control
  • Ecosystems and the value of adjacent protected areas to agricultural land
  • Plant genetic resources, management of wild stocks, farm animal genetics

    • Other related topics will also be considered.  Please submit your abstracts (250 words or less) by 16 November 2007 to the Managing Editor, Stephen Aitken (aitken@tc-biodiversity.org). Space is limited. For more information on Biodiversity please visit www.tc-biodiversity.org. Final papers will be due 7 January 2008, and the publication is scheduled for 15 April 2008.

    Produced in cooperation with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and partial support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Ontario Trillium Foundation and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC).

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    A farmer speaks. And then another.

    The first day of the Governing Body meeting of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture yesterday was enlivened by two speeches from farmers. Sunda Ram Verma is from Sikar in Rajasthan, while Guy Kastler is French. Neither, of course, is a typical farmer. Typical farmers don’t come to Rome to address the Governing Body of the ITPGRFA. But each had interesting things to day.

    Sunda Ram Verma has devised new techniques for saving water and was recognized for his work with cumin, guar bean and pearl millet diversity. According to the quasi-official meeting report, “Verma described his lifetime of developing and sharing improved crop varieties, said farmers would benefit from access to resources for screening new varieties, and noted that he has received no benefits from commercialization of his own improved varieties.” One might wonder why not. Because India does not permit such a thing? Or because he never sought cash benefits? I think we should be told. And in passing, one might further wonder why an NGO blog didn’t even record Sunda Ram Verma’s name. Too much respect?

    Guy Kastler is no stranger to international agro-politics, having tussled to keep GMOs out of Europe and more generally for some relaxation of Europe’s draconian seed laws. Again, the quasi-official report says that Kastler “distinguished between small- and large-scale plant breeders, and called for a dynamic Treaty that supports farmers’ rights, such as the right to sell their seeds, an inventory system to support their breeding approaches and plant descriptions, and a fund to support farmers’ consultations worldwide. He said the ITPGR subjects farmers to national laws, some of which undermine their rights.” His speech, however, is available at the Via Campesina web site, so you can see for yourself whether that’s a fair summary.

    I wasn’t there, but I’m told that there was some light head nodding among the delegates; I wasn’t told whether this represented gentle agreement or incipient sleep. Reading Kastler’s words, I somehow wonder whether the nodding was affirmative. He’s drawing attention to the fact that farmers (and gardeners) in Europe are the least free in the world, and that the Treaty, while guaranteeing them certain rights, does absolutely nothing to deliver those rights. Nor does it apparently admonish the governments — parties to the Treaty — who deny farmers the rights they signed up to in the Treaty. Could it be that those governments aren’t actually serious about farmers’ rights?

    For all the fun of the fair, tune in to Earth Negotiations Bulletin’s daily reports.

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    Hot or not? A SNP provides the answer

    ResearchBlogging.orgTime was when you tested how hot a chilli pepper was by tasting a teeny bit with your tongue, at least if you were brave. The hotter it tasted, the more capsaicin it contained, and the hotter it was. Then came Wilbur Scoville and his eponymous scale. ((An extract of the pepper is diluted with sugar water until a panel of testers can no longer detect any heat. Thus a mild little pepperoncino scores around 500 SHU (Scoville Heat Units), meaning that the extract has to be diluted 500 times to lose all heat, while a decent African birdseye starts at around 100,000 SHU. And Luigi’s little hottie Naga Jolokia is ten times hotter still, at 1,040,000 SHU.)) Now, all you need is a well-equipped molecular biology laboratory.

    Maria Arnedo-Andrés and her crew have identified a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP, associated with pungency in chillies. ((Ana Garcés-Claver, Shanna Moore Fellman, Ramiro Gil-Ortega, Molly Jahn and María S. Arnedo-Andrés (2007) Identification, validation and survey of a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) associated with pungency in Capsicum spp. Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 115: 907-916. DOI 10.1007/s00122-007-0617-y.)) A snip is a single letter difference between the DNA of two different organisms. Sometimes a SNP makes a visible and important difference to the organism. The genetic difference that causes sickle cell anemia is one such SNP. More often, the SNP is just a marker. It is associated with some other difference, but does not actually cause it. Breeders like markers because they allow them to quickly see whether some desired gene has been inherited after a breeding experiment. If the marker is there, chances are the nearby gene is there too. There are gazillions of known SNPs out there, mapped to squillions of differences. But, until now, no SNP that could tell you whether a chilli pepper was hot.

    There have been markers before, but they were either unreliable, failing to distinguish hot from sweet. Or they were physically a long way away from the actual genes for hotness, meaning that they were not very useful to breeders.

    The researchers grew a wide range of peppers, different species and different varieties. Two people tasted five ripe fruits from each type of plant. If all five were not pungent, the plant was considered non-pungent. But if just one fruit (or more) tasted hot, the plant was considered pungent. Then comes the magic, actually detecting the sequence differences among the different samples.

    They found one; in all pungent varieties, and only pungent varieties, there is a letter G at position 253 of an identifiable bit of DNA. In all non-pungent varieties, that space is taken by a T.

    This result is just a beginning. Breeders will use the SNP to determine very early on, long before ripe fruits have been produced, whether those fruits will be hot or not. Researchers still don’t fully understand how plants make capsaicin. The SNP will help them home in on the genes responsible. And this blog will have taken the opportunity to use that nifty little icon up there on the right to indicate that we are serious and responsible members of the scientific blogosphere, dealing with peer-reviewed research in a serious and responsible manner.