The rubber tree comes from Brazil, but natural rubber itself mostly comes from SE Asia plantations these days. One of reasons is the leaf blight fungus, but now comes news of resistant varieties. This may herald a resurgence in climate-friendly natural rubber at the expense of the synthetic kind, which is made from oil. But will that positive effect be negated by increased cutting down of the rainforest to establish new plantations in Brazil?
Ho hum … another deadly disease
Science magazine today publishes a paper about mapping the geographical spread of diseases. ((No link, because they’re so inaccessible. But the paper is Large-Scale Spatial-Transmission Models of Infectious Diseases by Steven Riley, which should enable people to find it.)) The key point is that different diseases spread in different ways, and recognising that should make prevention more effective.
It would be possible to run an entire blog on the emergence of diseases. Going well beyond the World Health Organisation’s monitoring systems, and prompted by Larry Brilliant’s TED wish, INSTEDD — International Networked System for Total Early Disease Detection — is starting to move. There are systems for veterinary and food borne diseases, and presumably some for plants too, although they are surprisingly hard to find on the internets. ((Help me, please! I know there are groups devoted to monitoring plant diseases, but aside from the usual suspect, which seems more interested in sexy animal diseases than dull old phytopathology, I cannot find them, honest.)) I’d like to read such blogs, but my point here is somewhat different. In a nutshell, agricultural biodiversity is likely to be a source of the solutions, both genetic resistance and as a buffer against disease spread.
In recent months we’ve seen UG99 wheat rust, Asian soybean rust, banana Xanthomonas wilt, cassava brown streak virus and now tomato leaf curl virus hit the headlines. Others too. By the time they make front pages news, these diseases are inevitably accompanied by estimates of the costs they will impose, and these can run into billions of dollars a year. And yet solutions, when they arrive, often go unnoticed. To some extent that’s a function of ADD among news organizations, which have a great deal of difficulty in understanding the process of science and so have very little time for long-term projects. To some extent it is because the solutions themselves often cannot exactly pinpoint specific contributions. A resistant variety may get its characteristics from several parents, as a result of many independent breeding and research efforts. It can be hard to trumpet that as a breakthrough worth stopping the presses for. And such resistant varieties may also take time to prove themselves, which also works against excited news coverage. As for the use of agricultural biodiversity to fight disease, that scarcely gets a mention.
We’ve heard a lot too about the Arctic (Seed) Monkeys and their plans to bury humanity’s global heritage of agricultural biodiversity in the frozen rock of Svalbard, but far less about the basic problem, which is that genebanks and conservation in the wild are starved of committed funding. Everywhere, it seems, people want convincing of the economic value of conserving agricultural biodiversity. At some point, I believe, one has to accept that it will never be possible to specify, in advance, the value of any particular bit of biodiversity. One has to go further and say that the manifest benefits of biodiversity to agriculture in just this one realm of defending our food supply against disease, are so large that the costs, whatever they may be, are trivial by comparison.
If some of those plant diseases caused real pain to the people who control the purse strings, perhaps the value of conservation would become more obvious. For now, I can only hope that agricultural biodiversity coughs up the solutions without too much delay. And when it does, we’ll try to take note here.
p.s. Of course, perhaps the biggest reason to fear disease epidemics relates squarely to human activity — the squandering of antibiotic sensitivity and vastly accelerated travel — which come together gloriously in today’s unfolding saga of the TB patient who took off on the lam. But I mustn’t abuse my position here to wail about those
Wild rice protected
I find this somewhat odd. Minnesota in the United States has apparently enacted special legislation to protect the DNA of its “state grain” wild rice. ((Not a true rice of course, but you knew that.)) The law requires the state apparatus to keep a close eye on genetic modification of wild rice, not only in Minnesota but throughout the US, and to notify interested parties if permits for GM rice are issued anywhere. Why? Minnesotans, please enlighten us.
Pardon our appearance
Oh no! Something has gone horribly wrong. Content has vanished without trace from our new improved look. I’m working on it. Or rather, I will be later in the day. Sorry.
Later, that same night …Â
OK, we’re more or less back in business here. Still some tweaking and such to do — header pictures, for one thing — but basically fine. And it has prompted us to take a step towards something we’ve been discussing for a while: a three column layout. Or maybe everyone hates that idea? ((Testing the footnotes))
Equator prize winners bank on biodiversity
The five winners of the United Nations Development Programme Equator Prize shared US$1.5 million and something else: biodiversity. Of the five, three depend squarely on biodiversity, one is managing a natural resource more effectively, and one educates people about biodiversity.
The village of Andavadoaka in Madagascar was among the winners, honoured for demonstrating how it managed an octopus fishery so that it can provide sustainable long-term benefits.
In Kenya, the Shompole Community Trust won for conserving the country’s vast and scenic grasslands and savannah as part of a profit-making ecotourism venture for the local Masai people.
In Guatemala, the women of Alimentos Nutri-Naturales won the prize for reinstating the Maya nut as a staple source of nutrition and this conserving the nut forests in the buffer zone next to a biosphere reserve.
The women of Isabela Island’s “Blue Fish” Association, who work within the World Heritage-listed Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, were rewarded for marketing a local delicacy – tuna smoked with guava wood – as a way to promote the alternative use of marine resources and control invasive plant species.
The other winner, Shidulai Swarnivar Sangstha, uses riverboat-based educational resource centres throughout the Ganges River delta in Bangladesh to deliver information to locals about sustainable agricultural practices and market prices.
Not surprising, really. But it would be nice to know more, and that information is proving hard to find. If any of the winners or their colleagues happen to read this, point us to a source for your story, please.