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The diverse uses of genebank collections

It’s easy to assume that it’s only plant breeders that use genebank collections. But in fact there are clever people out there who are delving into genebanks for all kinds of different reasons. Two recent articles on rice illustrate this nicely.

In the latest Rice Today Tom Hargrove tells the story of the global odyssey of the rice varieties called Carolina Gold and White.

Carolina Gold and White show how genes of good crop varieties spread. The seeds made a remarkable journey: from Indonesia to Madagascar by boat almost 2,000 years ago, then to the wealthy and slave-driven Carolina plantations. Her seeds seem to have helped war-weary Confederate veterans start a new life along the Amazon in South America. Freed slaves may have taken her seeds back to Africa, which she once called home. Carolina Gold recently started a new life in South Carolina, and her white-hulled sister is a parent of an improved variety for upland rice farmers in Colombia and Panama.

Hargrove describes how it was by comparing contemporary seeds with genebank samples that part of that epic story was pieced together, and how it was from genebank samples that Carolina Gold cultivation was revived, albeit it on a much smaller scale, in the State which gave it its name, after almost a hundred years.

Meanwhile, EurekAlert has a piece on another famous, though rather more modern, rice variety: IR8. One of the Green Revolution varieties,

IR8 used to produce 9.5 to 10.5 tons per hectare, significantly more than other varieties in the 1960s when average global rice yields were around only 2 tons per hectare. But, when grown today, IR8 can yield only around 7 tons per hectare.

Why? Is it nature or nurture? Researchers “grew rice from original IR8 seeds preserved in the International Rice Genebank and compared it to rice grown from IR8 seeds continuously grown and harvested over the last few decades.” Genetically, they were found to be similar, so the 15% decrease in yield must be down to environmental changes, possibly including hotter nights:

the findings demonstrate the need for ongoing or “maintenance” breeding because it allows rice plants to cope with a changing environment.

So, even when genebank accessions are not used by breeders, the results can end up being of use to breeders.

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Featured: Pawnee corn

Mike Listman revives the discussion on Pawnee corn:

A colleague at CIMMYT has suggested a possible linkage with Mexican native maize varieties, more of the tropical rather than temperate corn belt type (possibly why the Pawnee materials might not have prospered at Oklahoma day-lengths…) You could possibly confirm the Aztec-Pawnee linkage through a quick comparative assay of the Pawnee language and Nahuatl, focusing on vocabulary for everyday objects and activities (obviously, those that would have existed in pre-Colombian times).

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A breakthrough in West Africa?

We nibbled this piece in The Guardian a couple days back, but it really deserves more:

Health, nutrition and agriculture experts from the 15 Ecowas countries said nutrition usually gains attention only in the context of crisis and emergency response, but it should be integral to agricultural and development programmes if countries are to pre-empt child malnutrition.

That seems to be quite a breakthrough. When I posted the link on the Biodiversity_for_Nutrition Yahoo Group, saying that putting “nutrition at the heart of agriculture” was quite a thought, Danny at Bioversity was quick off the mark:

A thought indeed. Raises some very good points – integration, policy and strategy fragmentation, need to mainstream nutrition into agriculture… All good stuff and hey, we even have a project in the pipeline that offers a great opportunity to address these issues. Unfortunately, the environment/biodiversity sectors are not highlighted as one of the sectors which should also be involved. They should be. Minor gripe. I would suggest that the focal points for the project in question circulate this short and to the point article to all their partners and beyond. Recommendation: Circulate widely!

Unfortunately, it is difficult to find details of the concrete actions that will be undertaken on the ECOWAS website. And one is also left wondering whether the link with biodiversity will be made. There is a parallel ECOWAS effort on biodiversity in which Bioversity is involved, so perhaps it will.

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Live tweeting The Big Nature Debate

Well that was fun. Along with a few others, I live tweeted The Big Nature Debate which took place at the Natural History Museum in London on the afternoon of 7 October. You can get a flavour by checking the naturedb8 hashtag, 1 but I wasn’t very consistent in using it, and neither were the others, so you might need to hunt around for more, untagged tweets. Best point made? Well, apart from the one about weevils being important too (as pollinators of oil palm, among other things), that biodiversity conservation needs to talk to agriculture. I think that came from Professor Jon Hutton, Director of the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre. And vice versa. As pointed out using crop wild relatives as an example by Paul Smith, Director of the Millennium Seed Bank, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens.