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Organic space lettuce

Fresh food grown in the microgravity environment of space officially is on the menu for the first time for NASA astronauts on the International Space Station. Expedition 44 crew members, including NASA’s one-year astronaut Scott Kelly, are ready to sample the fruits of their labor after harvesting a crop of “Outredgeous” red romaine lettuce Monday, Aug. 10, from the Veggie plant growth system on the nation’s orbiting laboratory.

And I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to watch them do it.

As for Outredgeous, you can buy it online. It was bred by Frank Morton, as Matthew Dillon of the Organic Seed Alliance told me on Facebook:

The varieties that University of Wisconsin researchers recommended they grow were bred by Frank Morton, an organic farmer with no formal training in genetics, but one of the more successful vegetable breeders of our time. Farmers as seed innovators, even in space.

You can find his story online in various places.

His varieties are grown in many countries and even in space: Outredgeous, one of his most popular lettuces—so named for leaves so red that the botany students who first saw it didn’t recognize it as lettuce—is being grown on the International Space Station. (It grows quickly, has a high concentration of antioxidants, and is highly bacteria-resistant—a concern for astronauts eating raw food.)

But why not let him tell it?

My education as a plant breeder has been through several stages. The first one, just described, was based primarily on direct experience with the repeated life cycles of plants and their insect cohorts. I also read the twenty volumes of Luther Burbank’s life and work, which does not really qualify as an education in breeding these days (“Can you learn anything reading those?” one well known breeder asked). But Burbank was inspiring beyond belief, and made me believe anything was possible, given enough tries. Persistence pays.

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The impact pathways of international genebanks

This analysis does not attempt, in any manner, to undermine the significance of the exotic germplasm material received by India during the course of time, irrespective of the source. India is a recipient of a large amount of germplasm over the period of time from multiple donors including CG genebanks and other national genebanks.

That, you may possibly remember, is from a paper on the flow of genebank material out of India. Our commentary on that paper also brought into play a compilation of data by researchers at Bioversity which quantified the movement of germplasm from India and other countries not only outwards into the CGIAR genebanks, but also in the other direction. This turned out to be just as extensive. But, of course, national programmes like India’s do not just benefit from the CGIAR genebanks through the direct access they have to the material they conserve. They also benefit from the crop improvement programmes of CGIAR centres, which churn out breeding lines and varieties using the raw materials found in their genebanks, and make them freely available to national breeders.

We actually saw an example of that recently when India published a list of drought and flood resistant varieties of various crops that had just been released. Through the magic of Wheat Atlas, and some expert knowledge, for both of which we’re very grateful, we can actually work out the contribution of, say, CIMMYT, to the wheat varieties on that list. Here it is, at a first, rough approximation:

wheat table

Along the same lines, a recent blog post from IRRI says that

Seventy percent of all varieties released in the Philippines were strongly linked with IRRI between 1985 and 2009.

I’m sure India, and the Philippines, would agree that those international genebanks, and the crop improvement programmes they feed, are well worth having. Maybe even worth paying for.

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Tourism and conservation

The Convention on Biological Diversity has just published its User’s Manual on the CBD Guidelines on Biodiversity and Tourism Development. It seems very thorough, as far as it goes — but does it go far enough? In particular, what about tourism offers based on agricultural biodiversity? This is what the guide says about how tourism could help achieve the Aichi Targets:

It has been shown that effective tourism planning and actions can contribute to achieving at least 12 of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets contained in the [Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020]. For some Targets (5, 8, 9, 10 and 12) this is primarily about greater control and management to reduce damage to biodiversity from tourism. For others (1, 11, 15, 18, and 20) this is about pursuing the positive contribution of tourism to biodiversity awareness, protected areas, habitat restoration, community engagement, and resource mobilization. A further dimension is the better integration of biodiversity and sustainability into development policies and business models that include tourism, thereby supporting Aichi Targets 2 and 4.

But what about Target 13? Remember that?

By 2020, the genetic diversity of cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and of wild relatives, including other socio-economically as well as culturally valuable species, is maintained, and strategies have been developed and implemented for minimizing genetic erosion and safeguarding their genetic diversity.

cotacachiSurely agritourism is potentially just as valuable a tool for conserving biodiversity as trekking in protected areas. Shouldn’t the user’s manual, and indeed the guidelines, address the needs of this sector, or at least recognize that it exists? It seems that the CBD has trouble thinking of agricultural landscapes as harbouring biodiversity worthy of being conserved — and visited.

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Frozen fruits

A recent Nibble describing work in South Dakota to extend ever northward the range of the grape, including using wild relatives to breed new cold-tolerant varieties, brought back childhood memories for one of our readers:

Hansen was a proponent of stretching agriculture for the harsh northern environments. My grandparents lived in northern South Dakota and hence Hansen was one of the horticultural heroes from my childhood.

Hansen is — or was — Dr Niels Hansen, “South Dakota’s Great Plant Pioneer.” He sounds a fascinating character:

Already in his senior year as an undergraduate in 1887, N.E. Hansen was writing to his father, “There is both money and honor to be gained by someone who succeeds in bringing out fruits, better than old ones.” The money seemed to elude Hansen, though – he never got wealthy from his work as a plant breeder. But he did win honor, and he cultivated it carefully.

As chance would have it, there was another article on a northern fruit yesterday, this time the blueberry. That also has a long history of breeding in the Great Plains, though it all really started in New Jersey, of all places, as the article describes. Perhaps not surprisingly, though, the blueberry has expanded more southwards than northwards recently.

No word on whether macadamia is next for the cold treatment.