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More on cowpea breeding

Hot on the heels of a recent nibble on breeding cowpeas for Striga resistance comes a paper in GRACE on the diversity being exploited by cowpea breeding programmes in the US and Africa. It turns out that these programmes are using non-overlapping sets of genetic material and that therefore

US and Asian breeding programs could increase genetic variability in their programs substantially by incorporating germplasm from West Africa, while national programs in West Africa should consider introgression of Asian germplasm and germplasm from other parts of Africa into their programs to ensure long-term gains from selection.

That’s what we mean when we talk about global interdependence in plant genetic resources, I guess. And that’s why the International Treaty was negotiated: to facilitate the exchanges of germplasm necessary to broaden plant breeding programmes worldwide.

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More doom and gloom for agricultural research

I ((This article was sent in by Danny Hunter.)) was encouraged to read a couple of interesting news stories on SciDevNet highlighting useful efforts to improve scientific capacity in developing countries, only to be disheartened by another article identifying important gaps and weaknesses in many Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) in this very area. PRSPs are the multi-year plans that developing countries now have to draw up and adopt as a pre-condition of support from funding agencies such as the World Bank. Not good news for agricultural research and researchers in these countries.

The article highlights a warning for the world’s poorest nations to place more emphasis on using scientific knowledge and technological innovation if they wish to escape growing unemployment and poverty. The warning is contained in a major report — “The Least Developed Countries Report 2007: Knowledge, Technology Learning and Innovation for Development” — published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The PRSPs seek to reduce poverty through sustained economic growth, but fail to give importance to the role of scientific and technological change in achieving sustainable development. No wonder national budgets and donor aid for science, technology and innovation in general, and for agricultural research and extension and capacity-building in particular, are dwindling. ((“…although agriculture remains the principal source of livelihood in LDCs, spending on agricultural research has fallen from 1.2 per cent of agricultural gross national product in the late 1980s to less than 0.5 per cent today.”)) While there are no easy solutions to this complex problem, the report does highlight strategies for donors and LDCs that can improve capacity for science, technology and innovation,

from encouraging “technological learning” in both “farms and firms”, to making better use of international legislation on intellectual property rights, and encouraging donors to increase support for what it describes as “knowledge aid”.

However, while it is important to make such high-minded pronouncements, let us not forget that individual scientists carrying out research in LCDs have much to offer on a day-to-day basis in terms of enhancing national scientific capacity. Such capacity-enhancing activities might involve providing training and mentoring to young scientists, helping young scientists and scientific groups to form networks, ensuring young local scientists are acknowledged and included as co-authors on scientific publications, and so forth. I am sure there are other, more innovative approaches to capacity-enhancing that have been used by scientists working in the field of agricultural biodiveristy. If so, I would love to learn about them.

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Uncultivated biodiversity

A few of us have been known to anguish over the term neglected and underutilized species, for a couple of reasons. First off, why use underutilized when underused will do? More importantly, though, it invites a couple of questions. Neglected by whom? Underused by whom? Neglected by science and research, usually, and underused by people who could make more use of them. But still, it’s an unsatisfactory phrase, because as soon as researchers have become interested and people have started making more use of it, the species in question is neither neglected nor underused. “Orphan crops” is lame. Nothing else quite captures it. All of which is somewhat by the by.

Except that I’ve just come across the phrase “uncultivated biodiversity” in a book recently published by the International Research Development Centre in Canada. Food Sovereignty and Uncultivated Biodiversity in South Asia: Essays on the Poverty of Food Policy and the Wealth of the Social Landscape promises to be a fascinating read.

Based on extensive field research in India and Bangladesh, with and by farming communities, the book offers both people-based and evidence-based perspectives on the value of ecological farming, the survival strategies of the very poor, and the ongoing contribution of biodiversity to livelihoods. It also introduces new concepts such as “the social landscape” and “the ethical relations underlying production systems” relevant to key debates concerning the cultural politics of food sovereignty, land tenure, and the economics of food systems. The authors are leading activists and accomplished researchers with a long history of engagement with farming communities and the peasant world in South Asia and elsewhere.

The whole book is available for download, but I might just have to spring for a printed copy because it comes with a DVD of farmer-made films that I’d love to see. Come to think of it, if anyone at IDRC is reading this, why not enter them in our competition?

Of course, “uncultivated biodiversity” doesn’t solve the problem of what to call those pesky species that are cultivated and used by people but remain neglected and underutilized by researchers. Suggestions?

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Kutch’s wild ass and Important Plant Areas

I blogged about some recent additions to the list of World Heritage Sites a couple of days back, and now I’ve come across a potential new candidate, which should get in on the strength of its name alone: the Wild Ass Sanctuary in the Rann of Kutch. The wild ass in question is Equus hemionus khur, the Indian wild ass, a subspecies of the onager, the Asiatic wild ass. The khur’s habitat does sound fascinating:

The Rann, the last habitat of the wild ass (Equus hemionus khur) covering an area of 4954 sq. km is one of the most remarkable and unique landscapes of its kind in the world, which is considered as a transitional area between marine and terrestrial ecosystems. During the monsoons, while the entire area gets inundated, as many as 74 elevated plateaus stand out in the area. The sanctuary also houses 253 flowering plant species, 93 species of invertebrates and 33 species of mammals including the Khur sub-species of wild ass.

It would be great to have a protected area which is so strongly focused on the conservation of a wild relative of a domesticated animal. Wish there were more of them on the crop wild relative side. We’ve just heard that the international network of protected areas needs to do a better job of covering crop centres of origin and diversity. Now, Britain is hardly a centre of agrobiodiversity, but it does have a few crop wild relatives, so I wonder whether the British boffins who wrote the WWF report on protected areas and crop wild relatives had any input in selecting the just-announced Important Plant Areas (IPA) of the UK. I expect they tried their best, and the selection criteria do mention crop wild relatives, but it seems as if they were pretty much an afterthought:

The IPA project was conceived in Europe in response to the increasing rate of loss of the irreplaceable wealth of Europe’s wild flowers and habitats through rapid economic development, urbanisation, and habitat destruction. The IPA programme is a means of identifying and protecting the most important sites for wild plant and habitats in Europe. In addition to the protection this will offer to threatened habitats and species (higher, lower plants and fungi), IPAs will also offer protection to a wide range of species including medicinal plants, relatives of crop plants, veteran trees and many common but declining species.

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Farmers’ rights and agrobiodiversity

An analysis of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture’s provision on Farmers’ Rights argues that these rights are fundamental to the conservation of crop plant diversity. Among other things, the paper says that these aspects are most important:

  • seed legislation must permit farmers to store seed and planting material, to use, develop, exchange and sell it
  • indigenous varieties must remain publicly accessible and not protected by plant breeders’ rights. This can be achieved through plant registers that document all known varieties
  • farmers must be rewarded for the contribution that they make to biodiversity. This can include ensuring access to seed suitable for improving traditional varieties, support in conserving seed and planting material and sustainable utilisation of these resources
  • in order to safeguard these rights, farmers must participate in decision-making processes.

Farmers’ rights and agrobiodiversity was produced by GTZ, the German development donor, as part of its programme on Global Food Security and Agrobiodiversity.