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Sequence everything — but not only

potato diversityThe contents of a potato genebank? Nope: “…a maximum of two alleles per locus contributed to this variation.” That’s because this tuberous cornucopia is what the authors of a recent essay in the American Journal of Botany 1 got when they selfed a diploid potato clone which was itself derived from a cross between a completely homozygous parent and one that was very nearly so.

ResearchBlogging.orgWhat does this mean for genebanks? Basically, that they can’t rely on morphological variation, in even a whole set of traits, as a proxy for overall genetic diversity. So long, old-fashioned core collections. What you really need to do is sequence everything. Music to DivSeek ears, I’m sure. But that’s not all. You also have to make sure that the resulting better diversity information gets to farmers in a way that helps them support the processes that “create and maintain useful variation for functional traits and to develop strategies to identify and select valuable phenotypes.” Or on-farm conservation, to you and me.

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Brainfood: Grassland diversity, Potato diversity, English CWR, Genetic rescue, Saffron diversity, Lac, Cereal domestication, Turkish pea, Pathogen genomes, Rose fragrance, African cheese

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Digital filmmakers (and others) tackle African leafy greens

I came across this cool video about African indigenous vegetables via the Horticulture Innovation Lab newsletter. Made by a student at Rutgers University’s Center for Digital Filmmaking, it describes work led by Jim Simon of Rutgers and Steve Weller of Purdue University in Kenya and Zambia on growing and marketing plants like African nightshade (Solanum scabrum?), amaranth (Amaranthus spp), and spider plant (Cleome gynandra).

There’s another video on the website too. Well worth watching both, and indeed following the blog.

And if you want more video on African leafy greens, they feature in several episodes of Shamba Shapeup, Kenya’s version of Extreme Makeover: Farm Edition.

11695900_967012093323505_2028807038485570021_nOh, and BTW: vote for me!!! I’m only about a thousand or so “likes” behind the leader. Ok, it’s a mere photo rather than a video, but still…

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Searching for Rose Honey

We have on occasion blogged about “European” crops (and indeed livestock) being grown far from home, and how that sometimes serves to save varieties that have, for whatever reason, been lost back in the old country. Here’s another example, courtesy of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and its newsletter.

Ci Zhong, a Tibetan-Naxi village nestled in the Upper Mekong Valley, is renowned for its Catholic Church, which was built by French missionaries in 1914 AD. The French brought the first grape vine to the valley at about the same time. Ci Zhong locals inherited the techniques of vineyard cultivation and wine making from the French and do not use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides in their fields. Today, they are still growing the grape variety, Rose Honey, brought by the French a century ago. This grape variety has already died out in the rest of the world, due to a disease that wiped out almost all grape plantations in Europe at the time. About 160 kilometres north along the valley, the Naxi people of Bamei village have also starting cultivating a variety of grapes — Cabernet Sauvignon.

I can’t be sure about the statement that Rose Honey is extinct (except for its foothold in the Upper Mekong, that is) but that’s certainly what the internet seems to think. And I could’t find it in the European Vitis Database or the Vitis International Variety Catalogue or the US collection. But who knows, maybe it survives in some Baja mission oasis or Cape homegarden? In the meantime, I wonder if the French are going to ask for repatriation.