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A tale of three cucumbers

You may remember my post of a few days back about the request on IdeaConnection for cucumber germplasm resistant to nematodes, Fusarium, CGMMV, downy mildew and cold, for a finder’s fee of $2,000. I did a few genebank database searches and didn’t get very far at the time, but a comment from the curator of the cucumber collection at CGN sent me back to their website because I had missed this crucial bit:

Searches can be made based on passport data and characterization / evaluation data or both. Only a selection of traits is on-line searchable, however all data are downloadable.

It turns out that the downloadable evaluation data for cucumber includes 3 experiments on downy mildew and one on Cucumber Green Mottle Mosaic Virus (CGMMV). So I got the Excel files and cross-searched them for material resistant to both diseases. The result is three accessions: CGN19618 (Taiwan), CGN21584 (India) and CGN22272 (Japan). The first two even have georeferences. The Japanese accession doesn’t, alas, but that would be my choice of the three for cold-hardiness. It’s a pickle obtained from the Know You Seed 1 seed company. That’s three out of the five traits. I think that’s worth at least a thousand bucks, don’t you?

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Featured: Cucumber germplasm

Willem van Dooijeweert sets Luigi right on cucumber evaluation and documentation:

My name is Willem van Dooijeweert and I am the curator of the CGN cucumber collection. I read the request for germplasm of cucumber having certain traits on IdeaConnection. I can imagine that somebody wants to pay $2,000 for a resistance source to CGMMV. As far as I know this is still not found or not public yet. Concerning searchable data on the CGN website I want you to know that we make available all data we have. So if you cannot find evaluation data of cucumber, we simply do not have them. This has nothing to do with the state of our documentation.

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What’s the Greek bank worth?

Among 18 new projects funded by the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation is Valuation of the Greek Gene Bank. The project summary makes fascinating reading. Here’s a snip:

[R]esources of the Greek Gene Bank are under imminent threat, linked to financial pressures, with risk of loss affecting as much as 50% of the Collections …

Do you suppose that 50% might be an under- or over-estimate? Either way, the announcement creates all sorts of temptations to speculate on links between the health of genebanks and that of central banks. Just a thought, but wouldn’t it be a great idea to have a European Central Genebank to, like, remove the temptation for countries to neglect their national genebanks and fib about accessions, viability levels, distribution and so on?

Still, the project report should make interesting reading for genebank managers and their friends everywhere.

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Berry go Round hits new heights

Mike over at the Slugyard has created an absolute tour de force for the latest Berry go Round, the monthly botanical carnival. What is it? Lets just say that if you hybridised a long dead poet (geddit?) and a bunch of botanical bloggers, you would have his special Halloween edition. I’m just glad it was already All Saints Day here so I could read it in bright sunshine.

Seriously, highly recommended.

Next month is hosted by Nature Hermit, so go ahead and submit something.

p.s. Pat Heslop-Harrison’s equally forceful tour of Halloween botany was too late for this month’s carnival, but is equally worthwhile.

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A RING to rule them all

The CIARD Routemap to Information Nodes and Gateways (RING) is a project implemented within the Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) initiative and is led by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR).

The RING is a global registry of web-based services that give access to any kind of information pertaining to agricultural research for development (ARD). It is the principal tool created through the CIARD initiative to allow information providers to register their services in various categories and so facilitate the discovery of sources of agriculture-related information across the world. The RING aims to provide an infrastructure to improve the accessibility of the outputs of agricultural research and of information relevant to ARD management.

But what, no germplasm databases? 2 No Genesys? No WIEWS? Get registering, genebanks (and others)!