The 14th Session of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, taking place in Rome all week, has just adopted a new version of the Genebank Standards, two years in the making. Which we hope will be of more than merely theoretical interest to the Greek delegation.
New beer from old hops
Dept. of shameless self-promotion: A little while ago, Luigi nibbled a heart-warming tale of beer and genebanks; to whit, a hop variety that British brewers rejected as too tasty in 1960, and that found new favour as in-your-face American craft brews changed some beer drinkers’ ideas of what their tipple should taste like. And the reason hop OZ97a was still around for brewers to re-evaluate was that it had been maintained in a field genebank for more than 60 years. Meat and drink for the latest Eat This Podcast, where I interviewed Mark Dredge, the beer writer who broke the story.
Who knows what other flavours lurk uncharacterised among the diverse hops?
FAO Commission meets again
The Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is meeting in Rome this week for the 14th time, on its 30th anniversary. Nutrition is on the agenda, bigtime. But also little things like genebank standards and the process for developing the first State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture. You can sort of follow the goings on at IISD, and on Twitter.
Featured: GM for conservation
Luigi wondered why there was no back-up of a favoured banana in a global collection. Anne Vezina thinks there’s no need, and suggests that GM could conserve banana diversity.
Indian scientists are exploring GM to make hill bananas, which also have a GI designation, resistant to the bunchy top virus. For Fusarium, a neat system to make bananas resistant to the fungus is being developed in Australia.
In a previous post, you argued that GM bananas threaten crop diversity. Here’s one example how it would actually contribute to conserving a piece of diversity, especially given the difficulty of controlling Fusarium using management measures.
Ah, but would it be the same variety?
Brainfood: Wild pepper, Lettuce gene, Qat genetic structure, Date oases, Raised fields, Waxy sorghum, Striga resistant cowpea, Wild soybean, Kenaf diversity
- Domestication, Conservation, and Livelihoods: A Case Study of Piper peepuloides Roxb. — An Important Nontimber Forest Product in South Meghalaya, Northeast India. Managed crop wild relative manages to turn a profit for Indian forest dwellers.
- Expression of 9-cis-EPOXYCAROTENOID DIOXYGENASE4 Is Essential for Thermoinhibition of Lettuce Seed Germination but Not for Seed Development or Stress Tolerance. Managed crop wild relative gene could eventually turn a profit for commercial lettuce growers.
- Evaluation of microsatellites of Catha edulis (qat; Celastraceae) identified using pyrosequencing. Can be used to trace origin. The Man exults.
- Date palm as a keystone species in Baja California peninsula, Mexico oases. Jesuit-introduced exotics can be keystone species too. The Pope exults.
- Ancient human agricultural practices can promote activities of contemporary non-human soil ecosystem engineers: A case study in coastal savannas of French Guiana. Formerly managed landscape now managed by soil organisms.
- A novel waxy allele in sorghum landraces in East Asia. Out of East Asia…
- Identification of new sources of resistance to Striga gesnerioides in cowpea germplasm. As ever, they are not the ones farmers actually like.
- Development of EST-SSR markers for diversity and breeding studies in opium poppy. And, they work on the related species! Afghans exult.
- Kunitz trypsin inhibitor polymorphism in the Korean wild soybean (Glycine soja Sieb. & Zucc.). In other news, there is wild soybean in Korea.
- Genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationship of kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus L.) accessions evaluated by SRAP and ISSR. Originated in Kenya-Tanzania area.