Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

March 13, 2013March 13, 2013

“Expert” admits: I don’t know the story of the Enola bean

A couple of days ago, when I Nibbled Steve Savage’s “robust defence of plant patents” I said that I did not agree, and that this would never stop me linking to things. I also left a brief comment on the blog post in question. Matthew went far further in challenging Savage’s view in a lengthy, detailed and deliciously snarky comment here. Matthew also cross-posted his comment at Applied Mythology, Savage’s blog, where Steve kinda sorta replied to the points Matthew raised. You can read the exchange there and make your own mind up. But what really, really struck me about Savage’s replies was this:

I don’t know the story of the Enola bean. Perhaps you could summarize that so I and others don’t have to go searching for that information.

I’m sorry? You set yourself up as having some sort of authority in the matter of plant patents, value of, and you “don’t know the story” of one of the most important cases in plant patent lore in recent years? Forgive me if I perhaps don’t take some of your views too seriously.

March 13, 2013March 13, 2013

Farmersourcing germplasm evaluation

Our friend and occasional contributor Jacob van Etten has been busy. He has a piece out over at the CCAFS blog describing his work in India on crowdsourcing the evaluation of wheat varieties in the context of climate change adaptation which has been attracting some attention. He’s blogged here before about getting seeds out to farmers, but he’s also published a bit more formally on the subject, and seems now to be putting his theories into practice now at Bioversity. More power to him. If you’d like to hear him explaining his work, rather than just reading about it, you can do that too.

A bit surprisingly, Jacob doesn’t particularly highlight ¹ the role of genebanks in his CCAFS piece. It would be interesting to know why. Perhaps he can tell us here. Or on his Twitter account. Anyway, I’ve found a diagram on his Facebook page which suggests that he does think genebanks have a key role to play in diversified and resilient farming systems. Here it is, for those of you who are not his “friends.”

March 11, 2013March 11, 2013

Featured: DNA

Ford Denison points out that genes may be easier to trace than ideas:

As DNA sequencing gets cheaper (see “Son of Moore’s Law,” by [Richard] Dawkins [reprinted in the Devil’s Chaplain]), identifying the source of germplasm could indeed be automated. Identifying the source of ideas is trickier. If I cross two plants, each leaves a clear fingerprint in the DNA. But if I combine two or more ideas, even I may not remember where they came from.

Which gets perilously close to Matt Ridley’s argument about how ideas make progress.

March 11, 2013March 11, 2013

Brainfood: Flower microbiome, Salt screening, Sustainble fisheries, Pollinator interactions, Wild pollinators, Forest loss, Landraces, Fisheries collapse, Quinoa diversity, Potted plants, Wheat diversity, Goat diversity, Genomics of domestication

Unexpected Diversity during Community Succession in the Apple Flower Microbiome. Could be important in disease management.
Plant Tissue Culture: A Useful Measure for the Screening of Salt Tolerance in Plants. But lots of different ways to do it.
Fisheries: Does catch reflect abundance? Some. But probably not enough. Here’s the industry spin. And the NY Times does a number on it.
Plant-Pollinator Interactions over 120 Years: Loss of Species, Co-Occurrence and Function. Extinctions and phenological shifts have occurred, but the system has shown resilience. It is unlikely, however, to continue to do so.
Wild Pollinators Enhance Fruit Set of Crops Regardless of Honey Bee Abundance. Don’t you sometimes wish titles left something to the imagination? NPR breaks it down for ya, but doesn’t add much to the title.
Continental estimates of forest cover and forest cover changes in the dry ecosystems of Africa between 1990 and 2000. About 20 Mha of forest loss, not 34 Mha. Still too much, though. But how did FAO get it so wrong?
Robustness and Strategies of Adaptation among Farmer Varieties of African Rice (Oryza glaberrima) and Asian Rice (Oryza sativa) across West Africa. Local varieties can scale out. And should be used in breeding.
Genetic and life-history changes associated with fisheries-induced population collapse. Phenotypic changes during Eurasian perch Baltic Sea fisheries collapse could be evolution, but when you look at the genetics it looks more like immigration of unadapted interlopers. Which might be bad for recovery.
Variable activation of immune response by quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) prolamins in celiac disease. Quinoa may be gluten-free, but it can still give you grief, and some varieties are far worse than others.
Social exchange and vegetative propagation: An untold story of British potted plants. It’s artificial selection, Jim, but not as we know it.
Wheat Cultivar Performance and Stability between No-Till and Conventional Tillage Systems in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Tested 21 cultivars for performance under late-planted no-till system and — guess what? — performance varied.
Genetic diversity and structure in Asian native goat analyzed by newly developed SNP markers. They originated in W Asia, and then admixtured (admixed?) in the E to different extents. Yeah, I thought we knew that already too, but scientists gotta make a living.
A Bountiful Harvest: Genomic Insights into Crop Domestication Phenotypes. The mutations that underpinned domestication came in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Like this one in maize, for example.

March 8, 2013March 8, 2013

The unlikely origin of Venere

An Italian walks into a genebank… No, not the beginning of a tasteless joke. But still rather a funny story, so bear with me. The genebank is that of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and the Italian visitor naturally starts discussing Italian rice with the (non-Italian) genebank manager. In particular, he tells him about this strange black rice they have in Italy, great tasting and great for the health, an old traditional Italian variety, dating back to time immemorial. Venere, it is called. Does the IRRI genebank, the largest rice genebank in the world after all, perhaps have it?

So the IRRI genebank manager, who likes that sort of challenge, does a bit of googling, and a bit of trawling of the various databases at his command. And what should he discover, but that the old traditional Italian variety actually traces back to a donation made by IRRI 22 years back. Yes, records agree that in 1991 IRRI sent a sample of a black rice from Indonesia (IRGC 17863, local name “Ketan Gubat”), collected in 1972 in a place called Yogyakarta, to W.X. Ren at the Italian seed company Sardo Piemontese Sementi. Venere is a descendant of Ketan Gubat.

Helping develop a new market in speciality rice has not traditionally been counted among IRRI’s impacts. There’s a first time for everything, I suppose. But there’s a bigger point here. How do you monitor this kind of impact pathway in a systematic way? Continuously chase literature on the use of all the hundreds of accessions a genebank sends out? Unlikely. ² No, what you really need is a curious visitor who knows a particular variety walking into your genebank.