- Analysis of threats to South American flora and its implications for conservation. Bottom line: Ecuadorian and Colombian Andes, southern Paraguay, the Guyana shield, southern Brazil, and Bolivia. But don’t let that divert your attention from the cool maps.
- Management increases genetic diversity of honey bees via admixture. No genetic bottleneck there. And the same in more words, but not as many as the original paper.
- Phylogeography of Asian wild rice, Oryza rufipogon: a genome-wide view. When in doubt, throw more markers at it. Two groups in O. rufipogon, only the Chinese/Indochinese one related to cultivated rice (indica). Japonica out on a limb. And the longer version.
- Legume Diversity Patterns in West Central Africa: Influence of Species Biology on Distribution Models. Temperature variables are most important.
- Multiple domestications of the Mesoamerican gene pool of lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.): evidence from chloroplast DNA sequences. Andean and Mesoamerican cultivated genepools confirmed, and two sub-genepools within the latter, one originating in western central Mexico and the other between Guatemala and Costa Rica. Will they mash up with the study in the first link? Some of the people involved are neighbours and friends.
How has Gataka changed in 20 years?
How has Gataka changed in 20 years?, a set on Flickr.
Communications. Roads. Electricity. Water. Extension. Diversification. How difficult can rural development be?
Taro help is at hand
It was a couple of years ago that we started talking about the arrival of taro leaf blight in West Africa, and the possible role that resistant material from the Pacific might have in averting a catastrophe. Well:
On 21 August 2012, help came with the arrival of breeders’ lines from Samoa and PNG and varieties from countries in Asia.
We will be following their progress with much interest.
Agrobiodiversity surveys galore
Within days of each other, surveys have been announced on Who is working on agricultural biodiversity? and On-farm management of PGRFA. I don’t know if there’s a connection between the two. Is something brewing out there? I think we should be told.
Support a plant breeder
One of the strangest crowdsourcing appeals I’ve ever seen landed in my in-tray this morning. Sarvari Research Trust, onlie begetters of Sarpo potatoes, are looking for £5000 in order to bring a new variety to market. And the reason they need the money is that the variety has to be certified and approved by the UK government before it is allowed on sale. That’s how most agricultural biodiversity is managed in the European Union; if a variety isn’t registered, which costs money, it can’t be marketed. To protect us, obviously.
The Sarvari Trust says:
We can’t get grant funding for this kind of work because is thought to be near market research and therefore a private matter. Breeders of GM resistant potatoes do get grant support!
Frankly, I think that’s over-egging the pudding a little. The cost of testing and registering a variety is always going to be a “near-market” issue, and I doubt breeders of GM potatoes get support for that aspect of their work. The real scandal is that the fixed costs of variety registration are a huge burden for a small breeder, and trivial for a large one. And farmers and gardeners who would like access to a greater range of agricultural biodiversity are denied choice as a result.