- Biodiversity conservation in home gardens: traditional knowledge, use patterns and implications for management. Most cliches about homegardens are valid in Benin, apart from the one which suggests old people know more about them.
- Genomics applied to management strategies in conservation programmes. How gene jockeys can help you maintain enough diversity within breeds, but no more.
- Living close to forests enhances people׳s perception of ecosystem services in a forest–agricultural landscape of West Java, Indonesia. And agroforests perceived as being best providers of services, even better than actual forest.
- Saharan wheats: before they disappear. Surprisingly, they have not been much studied.
- The wild gene pool of globe artichoke. Four wild species lack studies of crossability with the cultigen, but look interesting and could actually be in GB2.
- Indigenous knowledge, use and on-farm management of enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman) diversity in Wolaita, Southern Ethiopia. Maybe 100 varieties, 10 dishes, lots of knowledge.
- Genetic diversity in nine native Turkish sheep breeds based on microsatellite analysis. Most variation within breeds, but not much higher that that of European breeds.
- Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, and Resistance to Phytophthora capsici of a Worldwide Collection of Eggplant Germplasm. 99 accessions, 4 species, 5 continents, 32 countries, 1 resistant genotype.
- Conserving agrobiodiversity amid global change, migration, and nontraditional livelihood networks: the dynamic uses of cultural landscape knowledge. Things are changing, but maize diversity abides.
- Fuel, fire and cattle in African highlands: Traditional management maintains a mosaic heathland landscape. Sustainable management of vegetation (including some CWR?) in Ethiopian highlands means using fire and cattle in consort.
How are forest genetic resources involved in responding to climate change?
According to Ian Dawson, one of the authors of a recent review in Forest Ecology and Management 1, led by Rene Alfaro, it depends…
The evidence for the negative effects of climate change on forests globally is mounting, with a good example being the outbreak of mountain pine beetle in British Columbia, Canada, believed to be caused by unusually warm winters. It has attacked more than 13 million hectares of lodgepole pine forests over the last decade. Such climate-influenced pest and disease attacks may be particularly problematic for trees, as pests and diseases with shorter generation intervals can evolve more quickly in response to new environmental conditions than their hosts can.
Phenotypic plasticity (the capacity of a particular genotype to express different phenotypes under different environmental conditions), genetic adaptation and seed and pollen migration all have a role to play in responding to climate change, but the speed at which environments alter may be greater than the ability of trees to cope through natural processes, and human help may sometimes be needed. Just as natural responses to climate change depend on genetic resources, so too do human-mediated responses such as altered forest management practices, the facilitated translocation of tree planting material and tree breeding.
Forest managers, however, sometimes question whether interventions formulated to respond to climate change are economically justified, and tropical foresters are likely to consider commercial agriculture and unplanned logging more important production threats. In this setting, appropriate management interventions that are good practice under ‘business as usual’ scenarios are likely to be more effective than those specifically to address climate issues.
For the future, field trials established across different environments are required that allow a better understanding of adaptive variation in tree species, including in drought, pest, disease and fire tolerance and resistance. Another interesting question to address is what role epigenetics (check out the term on Wikipedia) has in responding to climate change by providing a temporary buffer against environmental variability, giving the genome time to ‘catch up’ with change.
When dealing with trees that might only be harvested 100 years after they are planted, estimating the level of future climate uncertainty is obviously crucial. Otherwise, the planting of the wrong species at a site could be catastrophic perhaps decades into the future, as observed when 30,000 ha of maritime pine plantations were destroyed in France during the winter of 1984/1985, following the introduction from the 1940s of non-frost-resistant material from the Iberian Peninsula. New breeding approaches to those currently used are also required, as current methods, with the long generation times of trees, are often too slow to respond to change.
Brainfood: Lima been diversity, Cassava diversity, Urban soils, Oil palm seed supply, Ginger ploidy, Certification, Gene flow, Maize & drought, Coffee seed storage, Pathogens on seeds, Wheat breeding, Intensification tradeoffs
- Genetic structure within the Mesoamerican gene pool of wild Phaseolus lunatus (Fabaceae) from Mexico as revealed by microsatellite markers: Implications for conservation and the domestication of the species. Three, not just two, genepools.
- Farmer’s Knowledge on Selection and Conservation of Cassava (Manihot esculanta) Genetic Resources in Tanzania. Farmers exchange landraces, some of which are widespread and others more restricted in distribution. Only about 10% are new, but some have been lost.
- Urban cultivation in allotments maintains soil qualities adversely affected by conventional agriculture. You can farm in cities without killing the soil.
- Social institutional dynamics of seed system reliability: the case of oil palm in Benin. Farmers are being increasingly screwed.
- Natural occurrence of mixploid ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) in China and its morphological variations. About a quarter of plants have both diploid and tetraploid cells, and they look different; no plants are wholly tetraploid. Weird.
- Conserving biodiversity through certification of tropical agroforestry crops at local and landscape scales. Certifying the coffee or cacao farm only is usually not enough.
- Is gene flow the most important evolutionary force in plants? May well be, which means that conservationists, among others, need to take it into account. Fortunately, they have the data-rich genomic tools to do so.
- Greater Sensitivity to Drought Accompanies Maize Yield Increase in the U.S. Midwest. It’s agronomy’s fault.
- Desiccation and storage studies on three cultivars of Arabica coffee. Yeah, not orthodox. Didn’t we know that already though?
- Seed-borne fungi on genebank-stored cruciferous seeds from Japan. There’s lots of them. And something needs to be done about it.
- Delivering drought tolerance to those who need it; from genetic resource to cultivar. In making synthetic wheat, you can fiddle with the AB as well as the D genomes, but then you have to phenotype properly under target stress conditions, and have a way of tailoring the resulting global public goods to local needs.
- The Effects of Agricultural Technological Progress on Deforestation: What Do We Really Know? Not as much as we thought we did.
- Large-scale trade-off between agricultural intensification and crop pollination services. Intensification bad for pollinators in France, so bad for agricultural productivity and stability.
- Achieving production and conservation simultaneously in tropical agricultural landscapes. Intensification good for smallholder income in Uganda, bad for birds. If only birds were pollinators.
The future of genebanks unfolds, a bit
The potential benefits of recent developments in DNA sequencing technologies to both collection management and use will also be explored during the course of the project.
That was from an article a couple of days ago on the future of the UK’s vegetables genebank. Well, we learned yesterday that for rice, at least, that brave new world is almost at hand:
…access to 3,000 genomes of rice sequence data will tremendously accelerate the ability of breeding programs to overcome key hurdles mankind faces in the near future.
That would be DNA sequences from 2,466 of the International Rice Genebank Collection’s (IRRI) accessions, plus 534 accessions housed at the CAAS genebank, amounting to 13.4 terabytes of data. This begins the long road to sequencing the whole IRRI collection of about 100,000 accessions, the rationale for which was recently set out:
In this paper, we will discuss how genotyping and sequencing can be integrated into the activities of a modern gene bank to revolutionize the way scientists document the genetic identity of their accessions; track seed lots, varieties, and alleles; identify duplicates; and rationalize active collections, and how the availability of genomics data are likely to motivate innovative collaborations with the larger research and breeding communities to engage in systematic and rigorous phenotyping and multilocation evaluation of the genetic resources in gene banks around the world. The objective is to understand and eventually predict how variation at the DNA level helps determine the phenotypic potential of an individual or population. Leadership and vision are needed to coordinate the characterization of collections and to integrate genotypic and phenotypic information in ways that will illuminate the value of these resources. Genotyping of collections represents a powerful starting point that will enable gene banks to become more effective as stewards of crop biodiversity.
Alas, the news came a few days too late for the Pahiyas Festival:
Clearly, rice is the main inspiration of this delightful affair. The rice grains, rice plants and rice seedlings on display may all seem the same, but a closer look will reveal that they are not. Some seeds are longer, some are rounder and some are lighter in color than others, reminding us of just how rich and diverse our rice varieties are.
Maybe next year.
Meanwhile, if you want to celebrate instead by cracking open a nice bottle of wine from the Quinta do Crasto estate in Portugal, well, they’re using high-resolution genotyping there as well to figure out just exactly what clones they have in their fields. What’s that you say? You don’t drink wine? How about a nice bar of quality heirloom chocolate, also thoroughly genotyped, then? Truly the future is upon us.
Wellesbourne set for the next 5 years
If there was ever any doubt about the future of the UK’s vegetables genebank at Wellesbourne, this should settle it:
Warwick Crop Centre at the University of Warwick has won a five year contract from Defra to continue to host the UK Vegetable Genebank at the University’s Wellesbourne Campus.
Good news, as far as it goes, but I have my doubts about the idea of such short-term contracts for genebanks. I mean, it’s certainly good practice to keep an institution on its toes with regular reviews of performance and the like, but what exactly is going to happen if Warwick Crop Centre does not win the contract again in 2019? Will the whole thing be moved to another locality, lock, stock and cold room? And on what basis will that future decision be made anyway? Are there some performance targets that the genebank will need to meet?