- Opportunities and Threats to Harmonisation of Plant Breeders’ Rights in Africa: ARIPO and SADC. While the intention of ARIPO and SADC is to create a single internal market for protected varieties in Africa, “the end result may look quite differently.”
- Evaluation of Resistance to Ralstonia solanacearum in Tomato Genetic Resources at Seedling Stage. Out of 285 varieties from 21 countries in the Korean genebank, 4 may be resistant to bacterial wilt.
- Following the Open-Source Trail Outside the Digital World: The Case of Open-Source Seeds. “…by not rejecting the idea of property, including intellectual property, but rather attempting to manage it differently, it creates its own enclosures.”
- Grain protein concentration and harvestable protein under future climate conditions. A study of 108 spring barley accessions. Higher CO2 and temperatures lead to higher protein concentrations but lower yields, so lower harvestable protein. The good news is that there’s variation in the response of varieties.
- How can we harness quantitative genetic variation in crop root systems for agricultural improvement? Apparently we still don’t have a mechanistic understanding of root growth, and we’ll need it if we’re going to improve function.
- Bambara Groundnut for Food Security in the Changing African Climate. It’s nutritious, it’s drought tolerant, and it can be intercropped. What’s not to like?
- Neutral and functional marker based genetic diversity in kodo millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum L.). Indian material falls into 4 groups, with Bihar being very diverse. African genepool and wild species should be useful in broadening base in India.
- Origin, Dispersal, and Current Global Distribution of Cacao Genetic Diversity. We’ve come to the limit of the usefulness of the Pound Collection.
- Exploring the role of local heirloom germplasm in expanding western Washington dry bean production. 24 bean varieties have been grown in the area for 20–130 years, representing a useful starting point for participatory plant breeding.
- Growing Cassava (Manihot esculenta) in Mato Grosso, Brazil: Genetic Diversity Conservation in Small–Scale Agriculture. Lots of diversity within communities, and differences among communities. Varieties with same name not necessarily genetically similar.
- Establishment of an in vitro propagation and transformation system of Balanites aegyptiaca. So?
- Mapping cropland-use intensity across Europe using MODIS NDVI time series. Four indicators show highest cropping intensity in Germany, Poland, and the eastern European Black Earth regions, and lowest in eastern Europe outside the Black Earth region. Interesting to mash this up with agricultural biodiversity? Like earthworms?
Building a prize-winning cassava house
We often say that crop diversity is the foundation of food security, but you have to actually build a house on a foundation, to get the full benefit. So it’s instructive occasionally to consider all the myriad other things that have to go right for crop diversity to have an impact, quite apart from breeding. And it’s great to see recognition for an organization that works on a number of those things: the Queen’s Anniversary Prize was just awarded to the UK’s University of Greenwich for the cassava work of the Natural Resources Institute, which includes everything from pest and disease control to processing and product development. Congratulations!
And if you still want to read something about how to use cassava diversity to provide the foundation for all that cool stuff NRI does, The Economist has you covered.
Call for articles: Valuing underutilised crops
We are looking for stories that analyse how underutilised crops have been revalued. We seek examples of communities that continued growing and processing them contrary to dominant trends. What were the successful strategies and the challenges to reviving the knowledge and the use of the underutilised crop? How did production, processing and preparation of food change? What role did markets, policy, research or local food and farmers’ movements play? What changes did this bring to rural and urban communities? What was the role of youth?
Nuanced seed suppliers
Giant multinational seed companies are the spawn of the devil. All farmers really need is the freedom to exchange seeds among themselves and all will be well.
Right?
Actually, the world is a little more complex than that, although you would be hard pressed to discover that. No more excuses. The Access to Seeds Index has just launched its latest large report which you can get from the new and revamped website. So, what’s it all about?
The Access to Seeds Index measures and compares the efforts of the world’s leading seed companies to enhance the productivity of smallholder farmers. By matching the expectations of stakeholders in and around the seed industry with company performance, it helps to clarify the role that the seed industry can play and brings transparency to the contribution of individual companies.
And the report makes for interesting reading. For a start, although the giant multinational seed companies say that they’re committed to sustainable intensification and seeds for smallholder farmers, “the majority of these commitments lack tangible targets, limiting accountability”.
There are bright spots too. In East Africa, the Index notes, “regional companies play a vital role in providing access to seeds. They do so by addressing issues largely ignored by global peers such as breeding for local crops, addressing needs of women farmers and reaching remote villages.”
Of particular interest to us, three of the four focus areas by which the Index scores companies relate directly to agricultural biodiversity: conservation and use of crop and genetic diversity, access to genetic resources and intellectual property rights. The picture is slightly more nuanced than you might expect, but rather than attempt to distill pithy take-aways from the complexity of the report, I’ll just suggest you head over to the website — the East Africa Index is a good place to start — and dig around. The presentation of the data is almost as interesting as the data.
Good news from Fiji
While the extent of damage at SPC offices and project sites is yet to be determined, Dr Tukuitonga confirmed the globally-significant tissue culture collections at SPC’s Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees (CePaCT) in Suva are unaffected, as the building is intact and there is a back-up generator maintaining the temperature in the storage laboratories.
Good to know, as Cyclone Winston a week or so back was clearly a bit of a bastard.
And this from the genebank’s curator, Valerie Tuia.
CePaCT facility is all fine – and lucky we have a good backup generator…and the collections are all fine. There was a curfew but staff and us managed to get in to check on the facilities during the cyclone. Only our breadfruit plot is damaged with some varieties decapitated and some fallen over. We would start trimming and allow to regrow. So far getting back slowly and we hope power will back to our homes.
Very best wishes to Valerie, her team and all my other friends at SPC and in Fiji.