Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

December 5, 2012December 5, 2012

Conserving wild animals the hard way

With regard to … sperm collection from wild animals, FAO does not have guidelines on this, given our emphasis on domestic livestock. However, if the animal can be sacrificed, epididymal sperm collection may be an option. This procedure is briefly discussed in the FAO Guidelines for Cryoconservation of Animal (domestic) Genetic Resources (pages 99-100) (http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/i3017e/i3017e00.pdf) but some experimentation would likely be needed to adapt it to your species of choice. If the animal must remain alive, options may be to remove sperm from the testes by using a syringe (PESA — Percutaneous Epididymal Sperm Extraction), to surgically implant a catheter or by removal of only a single testicle for sperm collection, leaving the other intact. Two scientific documents on epididymal semen collection in livestock by Dr. Flavia Pizzi (one of the authors of the FAO Cryoconservation Guidelines) and her colleagues are available at:

ftp://DADnet:Mobile45@ext-ftp.fao.org/ag/reserved/dad-net/ReprDomAnim_epididimi2012.pdf (278 kb)

ftp://DADnet:Mobile45@ext-ftp.fao.org/ag/reserved/dad-net/PosterSLTB.pdf (870 kb)

For “conventional” sperm collection from living wild animals, an electro-ejaculator is often used, although this approach will not be successful for all species (e.g. it’s generally not used for pigs and horses among livestock species). In case your target species is wild cats, the following may be of use to you:

http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/31238/InTech-Wildlife_cats_reproductive_biotechnology.pdf

That’s from the always interesting DAD-Net. Makes me ever so very grateful the wild relatives I deal with are plants.

December 5, 2012December 5, 2012

Visiting genebanks in Nigeria and Benin

Some of you may have been wondering where I’d got to, a few weeks back. No? Nobody missed me at all? Well, I’ll tell you anyway. I was on a quick tour of West Africa, visiting the genebanks of IITA, NACGRAB (both around Ibadan in Nigeria) and AfricaRice (just outside Cotonou, Benin; its experimental fields are illustrated here to the left). It’s all in the context of the CGIAR’s new Research Programme on Genebanks. We were trying to work out the best way for the CGIAR as a system to provide an efficient and cost-effective service in long-term ex situ conservation of rice genetic resources in Africa, and indeed the rest of the world, given that three Centres have an interest in the subject. Below you’ll see the peregrinations our merry band undertook (thanks to Ruaraidh and his GPS receiver). I think you’ll have to click on the link and go to Google Maps to see the full extent of the trip. All great fun. And, I think, quite successful. I’ll post a link to the resulting document when it’s all finally agreed.

View IITA & AfricaRice in a larger map

December 4, 2012December 4, 2012

Endlessly debating agriculture

Don’t get me wrong, I think a robust exchange of views on agricultural development is a good thing, even essential. But when you’ve got “Achieving food and environmental security — new approaches to close the gap” at the Royal Society one week, followed by “The Future of Agriculture: debate the experts” a matter of days thereafter, you begin to wonder whether we are on the receiving end of way too much of a good thing. Having said that, needless to add that we’re incredibly interested in the results of these discussions, and if you take part and would like to summarize them for us here, you’d be more than welcome. To prospective organizers of such things my suggestion is that you stand back a minute and ask: what would be new here?

December 4, 2012December 4, 2012

FSA takes over ICARDA buildings

Free Syrian Army fighters have, in their words on the video below, “liberated” ICARDA. Our thoughts are with the international staff, still working from different locations around the region (most of the genebank personnel are in Tunisia), and especially the local staff, trying to survive in and around Aleppo.

@AgroBioDiverse Luigi, don't get shocked. ICARDA facility has been looted. Cars are with FSA now. Watch this http://t.co/qB85xJhw #ICARDA

— Dr. Joshka Wessels (@joshkawessels) December 1, 2012

December 3, 2012December 3, 2012

Brainfood: Bumper bonanza, Old peas, Irrigated meadows, Cereal mashes, Medicinal plants, Diversity and production, Millet gaps, Seed ageing, Flax core

First off — a pretty big deal. Taylor & Francis have made a bunch of papers related to sustainable agriculture freely available, but only until the end of December. Happy whatever holiday won’t offend you.
Twentieth-century changes in the genetic composition of Swedish field pea metapopulations. Metapopulations have become isolated populations. In genebanks.
Effects of different irrigation systems on the biodiversity of species-rich hay meadows. Change from the traditional irrigation system has affected biodiversity levels, but not a huge amount.
Research regarding the use of wheat biodiversity for obtaining some cereal-based fermented mashes. Let’s go straight to what we need to know here: the best mash come from spelt wheat. Oh, to be the one doing the organoleptic characterization.
Cultivation and high capitalization of medicinal and aromatic plants in the Romanian-Bulgarian cross-border region. If you’re really interested, there’s a database that brings it all together.
Crop biodiversity, productivity and production risk: Panel data micro-evidence from Ethiopia. More crops = more production. But the devil is in the details, I suspect.
Identification of gaps in pearl millet germplasm from East and Southern Africa conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. We used to do this sort of thing by hand in my day.
At3g08030 transcript: a molecular marker of seed ageing. This mRNA could predict germination performance of a dry seed lot across species. Good for genebanks?
Assembling a core collection from the flax world collection maintained by Plant Gene Resources of Canada. You don’t hear much about core collections these days, why is that?