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More “contaminated” bison

The ancestors of the bison, or buffaloes, of Catalina Island off the California coast arrived as movie extras in 1924. Scientists have always thought they were more likely to be pure-bred than many of the other buffalo that roam North America, because they’ve effectively been in isolation. Turns out it ain’t so. Nearly half the animals shipped off the island have maternal cow genes. Scientists believe the cross breeding probably occurred before the buffalo were shipped to Catalina — and nothing since 1924 has selected against it.

P.S. As the commenter to our original piece pointed out, nobody seems to have looked for bison genes in cattle. Why not?

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Jack Hawkes: Obituary

It has been a bit of a wait, but worth it. London’s Daily telegraph carries a fine obituary of Jack Hawkes, who died a couple of weeks ago.

Hawkes recalled that Vavilov treated him “as an equal even though I was without a paper to my name. He inspired me with his extensive knowledge, friendship and boundless enthusiasm.” Tragically, Vavilov was to be executed on trumped-up charges in 1943 after falling foul of Trofim Lysenko, his successor as president of the Lenin Academy, a man whom Hawkes found to be “a dangerous, bigoted and wholly repellent person — a politician rather than a scientist, very able to ingratiate himself with Communist Moscow”.

And there you have, in a nutshell, much of the early history of plant genetic resources.

Hawkes met Vavilov just before setting out on the British Empire Potato Collecting Expedition to South America, covering 9000 miles and collecting more than 1100 acessions. The Indiana Jones meta-narrative lives on, of course, precisely because of men like Vavilov and Hawkes who made it their business to go out there and find the treasure. To their eternal credit, they shared the loot with all who asked.

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Bigger not necessarily better in agrobiodiversity

Jeremy says we sound like a broken record on the lack of agricultural thinking in biodiversity circles at times, and he’s right of course. More charitably, it could be thought of as judicious use of a leitmotif. In which case another one would certainly be the unfortunate dearth of information on nutritional composition at the variety or accession level, certainly as compared to morphological and agronomic information. The reason for that is that genetic resources scientists and breeders have been more interested in things like yield and disease resistance. That’s had consequences.

Continue reading “Bigger not necessarily better in agrobiodiversity”

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Disappearing languages, disappearing agrobiodiversity

There are about 7,000 languages currently spoken around the world. By 2100, there will half that, if we’re lucky. That’s according to Harrison and Gregory Anderson of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages in Oregon, who “traveled the world to interview the last speakers of critically endangered languages as part of the National Geographic Society’s Enduring Voices Project.” Here’s a telling quote from Harrison Anderson:

Most of what we know about species and ecosystems is not written down anywhere, it’s only in people’s heads.

Just compare the map of hotspots of language loss with those of centres of crop origin and diversity. When the last native speakers of those 3,500 doomed languages go in the next century or so, they’ll be taking with them irreplaceable knowledge of agricultural biodiversity. Knowledge which we’ll need to make the most of that agrobiodiversity, and indeed to conserve it in situ (should we wish to) ((Or, indeed, should we be able to, given what climate change is going to do. Anyway, thanks to Ola for pointing out the article.)).