Robert lays it on the line:
What a shameful misrepresentation to say that the new [rice] variety “boosts yields nearly six-fold”.
A new rice for Mozambique
Scidev.net has an interesting report on how breeders at IRRI and the Africa Rice Center, working with scientists and farmers in Mozambique, have developed a new variety of rice that offers almost six times the average yield and is more tolerant of diseases. The new variety is currently still known as IR80482-64-3-3-3 and has just entered Mozambique’s formal seed sector for bulking up and eventual supply to farmers.
That’s good news for Mozambique and farmers, although it isn’t the end of the story:
“For irrigated and rainfed lowland ecosystems we can produce rice varieties that combine high yield, resistance to major diseases and superior grain quality accepted by local and international markets,” said Surapong Sarkarung, an IRRI rice breeder based in Mozambique.
But he added that drawbacks could be: the low capacity of the seed sector to produce certified seed; lack of milling equipment to produce high standard milled rice and lack of credit to support farmers to buy inputs such as seed, fertilisers and machinery.
And of course we are duty bound to ask: will any effort be made to collect Mozambique’s existing varieties before the new variety sweeps them away? Or maybe that’s already been done.
Plant and Animal Genome meeting unactionable?
We briefly noted Greg Baute’s thoughts on the genebank session of the Plant and Animal Genome Conference just ended. 1 For another point of view, here’s the take-home message from Pat Heslop-Harrison, editor of Annals of Botany.
[U]nlike the previous meetings, this week, I’m finding it hard to see what NEW areas we will be publishing from results being presented.
And lest you think that’s overdramatic, Pat’s list of areas that did emerge from the previous 18 PAG conferences is pretty astonishing. Not having been there, I can’t say whether there is indeed a big idea that somehow eluded Pat; it seems very unlikely. If, however, the big idea is how to stay afloat on the sea of genome data, then yes, I guess we are still waiting for the liferafts to inflate.
Put THIS in your databases!
So it’s true. Given enough baboons, and enough time, you can do anything. Even germplasm evaluation.
The Genomics of Genebanks Workshop at PAG deconstructed
Greg Baute has a post up at his blog on the Genomics of Genebanks Workshop held last week at the Plant and Animal Genome Conference. Interesting observations on core collections, comparing past genebank collections to current diversity in the field, and the role of crop wild relatives in breeding. I particularly liked Cameron Peace’s advice on how to get the most from collections of wild relatives of fruit trees. Maybe we’ll hear more about that at Davis in March.