Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

Over at the Coconut Google Group, Hugh Harris has had enough.

Snow White had no problem – not only was the name of each Disney dwarf carved on the end of the bed, they were identified by easily distinguished features: Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy and Doc.

Dwarf coconut names are not so simple.

• Dr Nair is looking for a source of green Malayan Dwarf
• Roland thinks there may be half a dozen green dwarf populations in Malaysia, not just one, pure green dwarf
• Dr Srinivasan calls for more insights on the distribution pattern of Malayan Green Dwarf, Brazil Green Dwarf etc.
• Elan Star wants to know about the Samoan or Tongan dwarf in Hawaii.

So perhaps this is a good time to suggest that what is needed now is a Global Coconut Genome Consortium.

For a fee, anyone should be able to send a coconut tissue sample (dwarf, tall, hybrid or unknown) to a collaborating laboratory for a DNA analysis that would identify that sample in terms of its similarity to, or difference from, all previously analysed samples.

The technology is available in many countries on all continents (except Africa?); there are already laboratories able to handle coconut samples in Australia, China, Europe, the USA and Brazil, and probably elsewhere (and the cost is coming down).

There is an International Botanical Congress in Melbourne, Australia, this July. If anyone reading this email is going to that meeting, or knows someone who will be there, please make an opportunity to talk about starting a Global Coconut Genome Consortium (GCGC or GC^2).

In the meantime, returning to the subject of dwarf coconuts, there can never be a 100% “pure” green dwarf or any other coconut (until in vitro propagation methods are a practical possibility).

Indeed, all coconut “varieties” are no more or less than local populations that look phenotypically similar to other populations that share a recent common ancestor.

At the risk of causing more, not less, confusion, I would like to suggest that the commonplace distinction of “tall or dwarf” should be forgotten and replaced. Instead we should recognise four “basic” plant habit phenotypes:

1. the tall wild type (with large and small fruited sub-types)
2. the tall domestic type (with different fruit-colour sub-types)
3. the dwarf domestic type (with different fruit-size and -colour sub-types)
4. the compact-habit dwarf (which has all the tall features except internode length)

But each of these basic phenotypes, and particularly the first two, are locally introgressed, so that there appears to be a fifth, intermediate, phenotype. For want of any accepted term, this can be thought of as the common cultivated coconut.

And, Elan, your dwarf is number 4 but if you look around you will certainly see number 3 as well.

So, a Global Coconut Genome Consortium. Any takers?