- Organic and Non-Organic Farming: Is Convergence Possible? Yes, but conversion is more likely.
- The vintage effect overcomes the terroir effect: a three years survey on the wine yeast biodiversity in Franciacorta and Oltrepò Pavese, two Northern Italian vine-growing areas. Year more important than place as determinant of yeast diversity.
- Cassava genome from a wild ancestor to cultivated varieties. The genes that have been selected are the ones you’d think. And here’s the thing actually being used.
- Taxonomy and Genetic Differentiation among Wild and Cultivated Germplasm of Solanum sect. Petota. The genes that have been selected are the ones you’d think. Oh, and the taxonomy is fine.
- The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts. Could prove useful. But it doesn’t look like the data is available yet.
- C-2001: Survival of short-lived desiccation tolerant seeds during long-term storage in liquid nitrogen: Implications for the management and conservation of plant germplasm collections. It’s not always great.
- Ensuring food security in the small islands of Maluku: A community genebank approach. Won’t be easy.
- Evaluation of Evolution and Diversity of Maize Open-Pollinated Varieties Cultivated under Contrasted Environmental and Farmers’ Selection Pressures: A Phenotypical Approach. Maize OPVs changed a bit in farmers’ fields over 3 years, but not in how they looked.
- Conservation planning in agricultural landscapes: hotspots of conflict between agriculture and nature. Threatened mammals and cropland areas where yield gap is highest are, not surprisingly, mostly found together in sub-Saharan Africa. I wonder if the same could be said for threatened crop wild relatives?
- Biofortification for Selecting and Developing Crop Cultivars Denser in Iron and Zinc. Current strategy is QTL detection followed by MAS, but much more downstream work on processing, extension and acceptance needed.
Sweet potato expert passes away
Very sad to hear of the passing a few days ago of Dr Daniel F. Austin. Among other things, he was one of the world’s top experts on the biodiversity of the sweet potato and its wild relatives.
Tracking down Chinese pigs
The most obvious impact has been on the pigs themselves. Until the 1980s farms as large as Mr Ouyang’s were unknown: 95% of Chinese pigs came from smallholdings with fewer than five animals. Today just 20% come from these backyard farms, says Mindi Schneider of the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. Some industrial facilities, often owned by the state or by multinationals, produce as many as 100,000 swine a year. These are born and live for ever on slatted metal beds; most never see direct sunlight; very few ever get to breed. The pigs themselves have changed physically, too. Three foreign breeds now account for 95% of them; to preserve its own kinds, China has a national gene bank (basically a giant freezer of pig semen) and a network of indigenous-pig menageries. Nevertheless, scores of ancient variants may soon die out.
That comes from an article in the Christmas edition of The Economist dissecting the consequences of the vertiginous increase in pork consumption in China since the liberalization of agriculture in the 1970s. I tried to find out more about that pig genebank, but it hasn’t been easy. The Country Report for the First Report on the State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources mentions State Domestic Animal Gene Banks in Beijing and Jiangsu, but adds few details. I suspect the institute in question is CAAS’s Institute of Animal Sciences, but its website does not help much. Wherever it is, the Chinese national pig genebank is going to be busy. DAD-IS lists something like 125 named pig breeds from China, from the Anqing Six White to the Zhejiang Middle Large. One of them — the Wuzhishan — has even had its genome sequenced. On the other hand, it may not be so bad, as according to a 2003 paper, “extensive research on pig genetic diversity in China indicates that these 18 Chinese indigenous breeds may have one common ancestor…”
Incidentally, another agrobiodiversity-themed article in the same issue of the magazine deals with the turkey, and is a nice complement to Jeremy’s two forays into that succulent subject over at Eat This Podcast.
Chefs help conserve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
I believe we have Nibbled both of these articles, but I think they could stand another few minutes in the limelight. One describes how self-described “farmer-scientist” Dr Brian Ward of Clemson University — with a little help from his friends — is bringing back from near extinction a peanut variety called Carolina Africa Runner:
Luckily, in the 1940s North Carolina State University collected samples of a variety of peanuts during a breeding program, and the Carolina’s germplasm was preserved.
The second article is about maverick Washington State University breeder Dr Stephen Jones’s attempts to come up with better tasting bread.
Several years ago, he started a project called the Bread Lab, a Washington State program that approaches grain breeding with a focus on the eventual culinary end goal. The idea came about because Jones says he was tired of the USDA and Big Ag dictating the traits that he needed to breed for. “They would tell us [a certain wheat variety] doesn’t make a good loaf of bread. Well, what they meant was an industrial, high-speed, mixing, full of junk, white — just lily-white — bread,” Jones says. “And we didn’t want that opinion, so we had nowhere to go.”
WhatOne of the several things the stories have in common is the involvement of chefs. Now, there must also be one out there interested in heirloom fruits. Then we could bring them all together…
ABS on genetic resources straight from the horse’s mouth
Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), recently gave a very nice, clear answer to a question on the relationship between the Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) regimes of the CBD and of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. It was at the Special Event on Food Security and Genetic Diversity at FAO last Friday, which preceded the Fifteenth Regular Session of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources, which started yesterday. You can hear what he says in a couple of different ways. You can fast forward to about 2:07:30 in the video of the event on the FAO website, and watch for about 3 minutes. Or, if you don’t mind only listening, you can click below. Dr Ferreira de Souza Dias focuses on Annex 1 of the Treaty, but of course the collections listed under Article 15 are in the same boat. The questioner is my old friend Desterio Nyamongo, head of Kenya’s genebank.