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Farming moved north with southern farmers

This is going to be all over the serious (and not so serious) blogs and news outlets, because it grabs the imagination better than a punch of burnt old seeds. DNA from four 5000-year old human skeletons in Sweden has revealed two genetically distinct populations. Three of the skeletons were hunter-gatherers. The fourth was a farmer. And the farmer’s DNA matched that of Mediterranean people, such as the people of Cyprus, while the hunter gatherers were typical Northern Europeans, but without any great affinity with any particular people. The two groups lived side by side for a long time, more than a thousand years, according to the researchers, and eventually interbred. The result is that none of today’s Northern Europeans has the same genetic profile as the original hunter-gatherers, although some hunter-gather genes are present in most Northern Europeans.

These results help to shore up the prevailing account of the spread of agriculture: that is was the farmers themselves who spread, rather than merely ideas about how to farm. The great mystery, for now, is did those farmers bring rye (Secale cereale, the classic cereal of Scandinavia) with them, or did it arrive much later. I don’t know nearly enough about the current story on rye domestication, but the centre of diversity and wild relatives seems to be in the Fertile Crescent, along with wheat and barley. There is evidence of domesticated rye from Neolithic Turkish sites, the earliest dated about 10,000 years ago. So plenty of time for it to have reached the southern Mediterranean and then moved up to Scandinavia, but did it? Most of the Central and Northern European rye remains are much more recent, only a couple of thousand years old. I look forward to a more learned account.

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BGI picking off CG Centres one by one

ICRISAT is the latest CGIAR Centre to get into bed with the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), following IRRI and CIAT. One does wonder whether if the Centres had approached BGI as a group rather than singly, in the context of the much-vaunted restructuring of the CG system, they might not have extracted a better deal from the shrewd gene-jockeys of Beijing.

LATER: Or is the real news, as a message we have received hints, that some CG Centres have NOT succumbed to the blandishments of BGI, because of worries over intellectual property issues? But again, if that is indeed a problem, would not a joint approach have been able to drive a harder bargain on IPR as well as cost? I don’t know. I’m just asking.

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Featured: Models

Marleen Cobben gives more details on her fascinating model:

The results from our model suggest that the spatial process of range shifting under climate change can have a big impact on the genetic composition of new populations. This is because the individuals arriving first in a new climatically suitable natural area, have a competitive advantage (in numbers) over individuals arriving later. So even if these latter individuals are better adapted to the local conditions, adaptation of the population takes a while because there’s initially so little to select for. No news thus far I’d say. The problem is, that this ‘while’ is fairly long compared to the predicted rate of temperature increase.

And there’s a lot more, all of it interesting. Have a look.

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Tricky stuff, extinction rates

There’s a BBC radio programme called More or Less that I like a lot, mostly because it takes the trouble to think about things. A new series has just started, and I was thrilled to see that the programme was going to tackle extinction rates. Not anything as simple as extinction rates for crop seeds, or agricultural biodiversity in general (which is always 75%), but the biggie, the global extinction rate for (wild) species. All power to them, they really did try, at the same time having some fun with some of the more inane pronouncements on the topic. But I must say, even knowing a bit about the topic, I found it really hard to follow.

Not sure how widely available the programme will be, or for how long, so if it isn’t at the BBC, you can also find the relevant bits here.

And to repeat what the programme said, just because we don’t accurately know what the rates of extinction are, doesn’t mean that the loss is unimportant. Except that, really, it would be nice to know the birth rate of new bacterial biodiversity.

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An open letter to open up EU seed laws

There’s an open letter floating around that is addressed to Members of the European Parliament and to a variety of EU Commissioners for this that and the other. The intent is to advocate for opening up the EU legislation on the Marketing of Seed and Plant Propagating Material, in order to:

[M]ake it more respectful towards the environment, consumers’ expectations and the needs of small actors in the seed chain.

No argument from us on that score. Indeed, we’ve always found the one-size-fits-all approach of the EU suitable only for the largest. Why varieties must be certified, when simple consumer-protection laws are enough to protect against sharp practice, remains a mystery. The letter appeals to everything, from freedom of choice via reduced use of pesticides to an improved environment, better conservation, and more rural jobs.

It’s a good effort, and most welcome, even if it is probably doomed to failure. The sad part is that the list of signatories is completely dominated by the usual suspects. It’s almost as if the heavy hitters who are so keen on agricultural biodiversity for developing countries (and we all know who they are) see no common cause with what’s happening in their own back garden.

Organizations and individuals have until 2 May to sign up.