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More on visualizing collecting localities

Clearly short of something to say after the almighty media circus generated by the climate change hotspots publication, our friend Andy Jarvis is reduced to celebrating an embarassingly artificial milestone on the DAPA blog today. Normally I would treat such awkward space filling with the contempt it deserves, but today I’m in the mood to, well, fill space. So here goes.

Andy’s post is about the 90m-resolution digital elevation dataset he and his colleagues have been working on for ages. The milestone he trumpets is 750,000 visitors, but more important is the fact that the data is now visible in Google Earth, which I didn’t know. Here’s what a bit of Spain looks like with the normal Google Earth imagery, the records on show being from Genesys. 1

And this is what the same area looks like using the SRTM data:

Advantages to both, I suppose, from a purely aesthetic point of view.

Incidentally, some further playing around with Google Earth revealed a couple of collecting localities for Beta maritima (from GBIF this time) that are easily visible in Street View. Here’s an example, featuring a record from France’s Inventaire national du Patrimoine naturel (INPN), catalogue number INPN_21204166 in case you’re interested. 2

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Food and Security: diverse views agree

The timing on the E. coli outbreak in Europe is perfect: right on the heels of the "periphery" debt crises, you’ve got the same countries (Spain, etc.) squared off against the same "victims" (Germany foots the bailout bill disproportionally and now suffers disproportionally on this tainted food outbreak). Bottom line: you – Mr. Terrorist – have created tons of enmity, economic loss, and discombobulating fear. If I’m al Qaeda, I’m claiming this one on principle.

Thomas Barnett’s take on the ways in which food impacts our future security are disconcerting, interesting, scary, and in a warped way rather entertaining.

And then there’s this, from a commentary on the G8‘s recent meeting in Deauville:

[T]he world is now better able to feed itself. But the same economic stimuli that underpin higher food output also lead to supply problems, a decline in living standards, and massive social strains, especially in urban centers.

This is important to bear in mind, because rising food prices have historically been the trigger for political revolutions. The three revolutions that made the modern world, in France, Russia, and China, all had their immediate origins in food shortages, fear of hunger, and disputes about food pricing.

Luckily I know better than to quote ancient Chinese proverbs.

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Protecting PI 198758 and its neighbours

Can’t resist a little follow-up to Jeremy’s biographical sketch of PI 198758, which as you’ll remember is a wild beet which hails from Le Pouliguen in France and has some coveted nematode resistance or other. If you look for the taxon in question (B. vulgaris subsp. maritima, and variations thereof) in GBIF, you get quite a few hits around the area of Le Pouliguen, which is in the Loire. And if you check that general region on Natura 2000 you realize that a lot of that coast is protected, whether under the Habitats Directive or the Birds Directive or whatever.

The question, of course, is whether the managers of such protected areas as Mor Braz (that’s the northern polygon on the map) and the Estuaire de la Loire Nord (the southern polygon) are aware of this or any other crop wild relative that may chance to occur in their charges. I suspect that even if you told them, alas, they would not much care. And yes, I know that some of those records seem to fall in the sea. Take it up with the Service du Patrimoine naturel, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, who provided the original data to GBIF.

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Will the real PI 198758 please stand up

An über-narrative that pulses at the heart of the “conservation for use” genetic resources body is the one about the accession that saved the planet. Some sample, preferably of an unprepossessing, weedy individual that otherwise wouldn’t merit more than a glance, turns out to have the gene that confers resistance to a disease, or boosts the content of something or other. Breeders, after a long search and an almighty struggle, transfer the gene into suitably modern varieties which are unleashed on a grateful world just in time to avoid certain disaster. It helps if the saviour sample can boast a biographical tidbit, such as saved by a nonagenarian grannie, or identified while the collector cast his eye about during a yak butter tea break in the Hindu Kush.

We’ve got a million of them, from Hessian flies to tomato solids to dwarfing genes to double-low canola to non-bitter cucumbers to [insert your favourite here].

And then there’s the one about nematode resistance in beets, mostly sugar beets, a new one on me. I was recently tasked to find out more about this particular story, with very little to go on beyond the taskmaster’s hazy memory of the standard über-narrative. A little inspired Googling led me to Pre-breeding for nematode resistance in beet, by W. Lange and Th. S.M. De Bock, who helpfully relate that:

Resistant plant materials originated from the annual accession PI 198758 of B. vulgaris subsp_ maritima, which had been collected in Le Pouliguen, Brittany, France.

Paydirt! And the inclusion of a PI number suggests that this came from the USDA’s genebank system, to which I hurried for more information.  3

However, and this is where it gets complicated, a search for PI 198758 at USDA’s GRIN says that it was collected by G. Coons, of the USDA Tobacco and Sugar Crops Research Branch, at Coimbra in Portugal some time between 1946 and 1951. (It is also not currently available, but that’s a separate story). But — more paydirt! — PI 198759, the very next accession, was indeed collected by Coons at Le Pouliguen in France.

Further Googling took me to the Sugarbeet Research Unit at Fort Collins, who were kind enough to answer my questions about which accession — 198758 or 198759 — should star in the narrative.

“In 1987 I received from IRS, Bergen op Zoom, 4 a packet of seed that was labelled Le Pouliguen Group 2, Pi 198758-59. I also tried to figure this number out and have concluded that its meaning is different from PI as used by GRIN. I think it was a code used by IRS meaning 1987 seed lots 58 and 59.”

Well, maybe … but that really does seem like way too much of a coincidence, that a sample harvested in The Netherlands in 1987, and that came from Le Pouliguen, or has an accession from Le Pouliguen in its pedigree, should happen to end up with the same number as one collected at Le Pouliguen between 1946 and 1951. I mean, it’s possible, but …

Something weird has happened along the way, I suspect. Other evidence from the beet breeders at Fort Collins suggests that Le Pouliguen is the correct location, because other accessions that showed partial resistance to nematodes came from the Loire estuary. Did Lange and De Bock make a mistake in their number? Did GRIN record the wrong collection location for PI 198758? Who knows?

And a final question: am I going to let any of this truth-seeking have any impact on my narrative?

No. But it sure was fun, and it isn’t often you get to say that about trips into GBDBH.