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Accidental cross reveals salt-tolerant wheat genes

Scientists at the Australian CSIRO Plant Industry (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) have discovered two genes, called Nax1 and Nax2, that could be used to develop salt-tolerant wheats. Nax1 exudes sodium (Na, geddit?) from the leaves while Nax2 excludes it from the roots. The two genes appear to come from an ancient type of wheat, Triticum monococcum, that was accidentally crossed into a modern durum wheat line about 35 years ago. Rana Munns, the team leader, said the discovery was an amazing stroke of luck.

We screened a hundred durum wheats from the Australian Winter Cereals Collection at Tamworth, which contains tens of thousands of wheat types. Highlighting the fact that the science of plant breeding sometimes relies on an element of good fortune, we were lucky to find the durum variety with the ancient genes straight away, otherwise we might have been looking for years.

The search was motivated by the knowledge that 6% of the world’s arable areas are affected by salinity.

Personally, of course, I’d like to know more about that accidental cross that put T. monococcum genes into a modern bread wheat, but details are not forthcoming.

Article: Physiological Characterisation of Two Genes for Na+ Exclusion in Durum Wheat: Nax1 and Nax2.

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Whinge: Agriculture is part of biodiversity

From the global to the local, I’m getting increasingly fed up with people who jump on the biodiversity bandwagon with not even a nod to agriculture. It’s what feeds us, for goodness sake. And yet neither a comment on how the world should respond to the latest report on climate change nor the plans for a little biodiversity fair in a little area of Yorkshire in England make any mention of it. Bah!

The same seems to be true of a symposium called Shades of Green: Exploring biodiversity, human values and urban planning. It is at the University of Guelph in Canada, on 8 March. If you’re in the neighbourhood, with nothing better to do, why not pop along and report here on whether anyone uses the dreaded four-letter f-word: food.

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How to brew beer, Zimbabwe style

An excellent post on Field to Feast, a blog of “Africa-inspired writing, cooking and eating”, describes the process of making (and drinking) some of the local brews of Zimbabwe. “I don’t think I’ve heard of a grain or fruit that isn’t made into some sort of beer or liquor,” Carolyn, the author, writes. She goes on to describe brewing a batch of chikokiyana, a quick-fire beer made from maize. It does point up the human propensity to turn anything fermentable into an alcoholic beverage, even if it is something of an acquired taste. But it isn’t just home brewers who use a diversity of raw materials. Some big brewers have adopted a similar strategy.

Of late, my own web searches for articles about sorghum have been overwhelmed by news about a sorgum-based beer from brewing giant Anheuser-Busch. The beer, called Redbridge, is being touted as good for drinkers who are allergic to gluten. It also represents a deliberate attempt by the brewer to develop new niches for different drinkers, based on a diversity of raw materials, to boost sales and prevent swings in revenue. Sounds an awful lot like using several species and varieties in a farming system to increase production and stabilize yields.

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Prioritizing African protected areas

This EU-funded project has looked at all the national parks and reserves in Africa and assessed the contribution each makes to conserving biodiversity as part of the overall system of protected areas. Really an incredible job. Mainly dealing with animals, however, so I wonder if something similar could be done with things like wild crop relatives or something. Also, could these techniques be applied to in situ crop conservation?

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The place of meat

I just had to link to Tom Philpott’s latest over at Gristmill, for its truly wonderful headline: In Seitan’s Lair.

Seitan, for those unfamiliar with it, is what you are left with if you wash a good lump of wheat dough under water. All the starch goes down the plug, leaving you with a ball of essentially pure wheat gluten protein that can then be fashioned into various meat substitutes.

It crops up late in Philpott’s musings, as an aside on vegan cooking, but if I had been smart enough to think of the headline I would not have let its irrelevance to the whole article put me off either. Anyway, the entire article is worth a read because it tries to put meat-eating into context, reminding us that meat fattened on grain is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that good farming requires diversity, of which livestock should be a small, but important component. Just as meat can be a small but important component of a good diet.

To the vegetarians and vegans who take a different view, I would point out only that animals are awfully good at turning things we humans choose not to eat, like grass and acorns and household scraps, into things we do, like lamb chops cheese and prosciutto. It seems wasteful not to use them in that way.