- The preservation of genetic resources of the vine requires cohabitation between institutional clonal selection, mass selection and private clonal selection. Intra-varietal diversity, that is. They apparently do it best in Portugal.
- Association of dwarfism and floral induction with a grape ‘green revolution’ mutation. Cool things I learned from this paper: 1. Pinot Meunier is a periclinal mutant. 2. Tendrils are inflorescences. 3. Dwarf grapes are dwarf for the same reason dwarf wheat is dwarf. No word on what the Portuguese are doing about it. And the fact that the paper is over 10 years old is irrelevant to its coolness.
- Quantifying the impacts of ecological restoration on biodiversity and ecosystem services in agroecosystems: A global meta-analysis. Supporting ecosystem services go up 40% on average, regulating ES by 120%. Well worth having.
- Can a Botanic Garden Cycad Collection Capture the Genetic Diversity in a Wild Population? Yes, but need to “(1) use the species biology to inform the collecting strategy; (2) manage each population separately; (3) collect and maintain multiple accessions; and (4) collect over multiple years.” Maybe they should talk to the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden guys.
- Genebanking Seeds from Natural Populations. It’s more difficult than with crops. And then you’ve got the above.
- Genomics-assisted breeding for boosting crop improvement in pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan). “…pigeonpea has become a genomic resources-rich crop and efforts have already been initiated to integrate these resources in pigeonpea breeding.” And now we wait.
- Crop wild relatives of pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.]: Distributions, ex situ conservation status, and potential genetic resources for abiotic stress tolerance. 15 of them need collecting. And, presumably, genotyping (see above).
- Diversity in the breadfruit complex (Artocarpus, Moraceae): genetic characterization of critical germplasm. 349 individuals from 255 accessions are 197 unique genotypes from 129 lineages.
- Musa spp. Germplasm Management: Microsatellite Fingerprinting of USDA–ARS National Plant Germplasm System Collection. Used to identify mislabelled in vitro accessions. Data in GRIN-Global.
- Education and access to fish but not economic development predict chimpanzee and mammal occurrence in West Africa. Having fish to eat means you leave chimpanzees alone.
- Community Perspectives on the On-Farm Diversity of Six Major Cereals and Climate Change in Bhutan. About 30% of varieties lost over last 20 years. But what does it mean that “93% of the respondents manage and use agro-biodiversity for household food security and livelihood”? What exactly does that other 7% of farmers do?
- Amino acid composition and nutritional value of four cultivated South American potato species. S. goniocalyx is best for you. But does it taste any good?
Setting the rules of the game
We’re delighted to publish today a guest post from Gabi Everett. Gabi is an MSc student in Cristobal Uauy’s research group at the John Innes Centre. We hope this is the first of many contributions from her. Until the next one, though, you can follow her on Twitter.
I’ve never been one to listen much to the radio, but having started working with cereals in the last couple of months, I decided to tune in to BBC4 the other day to hear The Grain Divide, a program about wheat. From hearing about the team of scientists who died of starvation during World War 2 instead of eating their seed collection, to a farmer so driven to recreate a heritage bread that he’s dedicated his life to it, all of the stories had something in common: people passionate about our crop’s diversity.
Many people around the world today have the same interest and passion (although in maybe a less poetic way), and a lot of effort is being put into conserving this diversity in seedbanks and other forms of germplasm collections. With 7 million accessions worldwide (of which around 2 million are thought to be distinct), we are faced with the question: how do we make the most of them?
To fully unlock the potential of genetic resources — to discover new useful traits and breed new and adapted crop varieties — the genotypic and phenotypic variability of these collections has to be better understood. This information isn’t available today in a systematic global manner, and this is the gap that the DivSeek initiative hopes to fill.
An international effort with a diverse set of enthusiastic stakeholders, DivSeek hopes to define the best way to do germplasm evaluation, by putting genomics and phenomics at the service of breeders: “omics” shouldn’t scare anybody off. The DivSeek partners want to create standards and tools for handling data that will transform large-scale germplasm evaluation into a much more effective and systematic process.
The first difficulty to be overcome is that there isn’t a single genotyping method that caters to all needs. The objectives of genotyping germplasm can range from assessing overall genetic variability, to finding rare alleles, carrying out population studies, and creating prediction models that relate genotype to phenotype. For each purpose, different genomic tools can be used, with different pros and cons (nicely reviewed here). Added to this, some crops are better served with genomic resources than others. In the end, a number of methods will have to be standardized, which will take time.
Another issue regards standardizing phenomics for wild species. Wild relatives do not in general have an environmental range as big as that of the crop. To make sure that a trait identified in a wild relative at one site is stable and of agronomic importance at other sites too, it should be assessed across this larger distribution. A solution would be to cross the wild relative to a number of elite varieties. While this might be ok on a small scale, scaling up will put a lot of strain on resources, both human and data.
Another challenge will be making sure that the information produced has a long life span. This is especially difficult when considering how new technologies appear at an ever increasing rate these days, and how the challenges faced by farmers change over time. Large-scale phenotyping is likely to be carried out for numerous traits over a long period, which means that it needs to be done in a way that allows for comparison between different projects and collections.
Some of the challenges that I want to see addressed by DivSeek is how to be inclusive of minor crops and how to engage smaller seedbanks. It is expected that major crops, with more genomic resources and money behind them, will be exhaustively studied in evaluation efforts. It is also expected that seedbanks that are already involved in such projects will continue to be engaged. I am looking forward to seeing how the work done by DivSeek on major crops will impact on the potential of smaller collections and minor crops. Maybe the existence of a structured pipeline will be a positive influence.
Last week I had the chance to meet a representative from a DivSeek partner from the UK — this brought home to me again the strength of DivSeek, which is its diversity of players and their passion and enthusiasm for the initiative. From seedbank managers, to bioinformaticians, breeders and researchers, I hope this diversity is maintained and strengthened.
My hope for the future of the initiative is that it succeeds not only in creating a standardized framework for the management of phenotypic and genotypic evaluation data, but that this leads to a change in how collections and genetic variability are seen outside the genebank community. It might not be too much to hope for that the success of DivSeek in getting the most out of crop collections will have a positive impact on how plant and environmental conservation in general are valued.
Brainfood: Domesticating seaweed, Upland sheep, Using CWR, Breadfruit amino acids, Species modelling, Echinochloa review, Fermented foods, Buckwheat breeding, Biofortified millet, Weird Japanese chicken, Barley yield stability
- Seaweed cultivation: potential and challenges of crop domestication at an unprecedented pace. I for one welcome our new algal overlords.
- Recent advances in understanding the genetic resources of sheep breeds locally-adapted to the UK uplands: opportunities they offer for sustainable productivity. Lower susceptibility to Maedi-Visna virus, for example.
- Back to the wilds: Tapping evolutionary adaptations for resilient crops through systematic hybridization with crop wild relatives. The promiscuity of plants will save us.
- Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis): a source of high-quality protein for food security and novel food products. All 49 varieties tested have full spectrum of essential amino acids.
- Predicting changes in the distribution and abundance of species under environmental change. Distributions are not enough, can adapt some methods to look at abundance too. Oh, and intraspecific diversity.
- Barnyard millet — a potential food and feed crop of future. Decline in cultivation could be reversed due to nutritional quality and adaptability, but it won’t be easy.
- Inclusion of Fermented Foods in Food Guides around the World. The benefits should be better known.
- Discovery and genetic analysis of non-bitter Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum Gaertn.) with trace-rutinosidase activity. Wow, a non-bitter buckwheat found in Nepal! Should now be possible to produce some better-tasting improved varieties. Yeah but you know how long that usually takes…
- Breeding of ‘Manten-Kirari’, a non-bitter and trace-rutinosidase variety of Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum Gaertn.). Well I feel foolish…
- Higher iron pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum L.) provides more absorbable iron that is limited by increased polyphenolic content. High Fe is not enough.
- Characteristics of Egg-related Traits in the Onagadori (Japanese Extremely Long Tail) Breed of Chickens. It’s a “Special National Natural Treasure” of Japan and no wonder.
- Exploitation of yield stability in barley. It’s not really feasible to measure it accurately, and therefore select for it, but when you do, it seems hybrids are better at it.
Let us safeguard our propagules under appropriate conditions!
As North Korea publishes its official list of new patriotic slogans, what we all want to know, of course, is whether the country’s agrobiodiversity receives the attention it deserves. Well, here is a selection of the more striking agriculturally-themed exhortations, culled from the full list of — count them — 310:
- Let us make our country overflow with rice by boosting cereals production!
- Actively introduce water-saving farming and other scientific farming methods!
- Let us work hard to secure water resources as an all-people campaign!
- Let us encourage organic farming on an extensive scale!
- Establish the food production cycle of crop cultivation and livestock farming, and fruit growing and livestock farming!
- Let us beat the world in fruit farming by making it scientific, modern and intensive!
- Make fruits cascade down and their sweet aroma fill the air on the sea of apple trees at the foot of Chol Pass!
- Grow vegetables extensively in greenhouses!
- Let us turn ours into a country of mushrooms by making mushroom cultivation scientific, intensive and industrialized!
- Let us carry through the great Generalissimos’ instructions on “grass for meat”!
- Let us expedite the construction of the large-scale livestock farming base in the Sepho area!
- Produce larger quantities of meat, eggs and milk holding high the banner of science-based livestock farming!
Very disappointing not to see the conservation of crop diversity in genebanks more forcefully encouraged.
Target 2.5 passes muster
By 2020 maintain genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants, farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at national, regional and international levels, and ensure access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge as internationally agreed.
Sound familiar? Well, it is Target 2.5 of the draft Sustainable Development Goals, contributing to the goal to
End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
It’s not exactly as I would personally prefer to phrase it, but you know what it’s like, this language wasn’t just crafted by a committee, but by a committee of committees.
Anyway, despite whatever stylistic shortcomings the language of this particular target may have, it has just received a seal of approval by the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the International Social Science Council (ISSC) in their recent review of the SDGs as they currently stand. This is what the report has to say about 2.5 in particular:
Very sensible suggestions for improvement. For the record, I think the 2020 timeframe was chosen to gel with the Global Plant Strategy for Plant Conservation. Anyway, overall, the target is “well defined and based on the latest scientific evidence,” unlike 71% of the other 168. Phew.