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Sea buckthorn becoming a success in a land with no sea

The name of the game in Mongolian agriculture is diversification. And one of the things researchers at PSARTI, the Plant Science Research and Training Institute in Darkhan, and others are looking at is a shrubby berry called sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) with some interesting nutritional properties. They have put together a small germplasm collection of local and introduced material and are doing agronomic trials of various kinds, trying to find the best varieties for different purposes. In fact, the plant has a pretty long and rich history in Mongolia:

It is said that Genghis Khan, the Mongol conqueror, who established one of the largest empires from China to Eastern Europe in the 13th century, relied on three treasures: well organized armies, strict discipline and Seabuckthorn. Seabuckthorn berries and seed oil made Genghis Khan’s soldiers stronger than his enemies.

There are already some products on the market. Like this delicious icecream, called Ice Doctor.

The natural history museum in downtown Ulaanbaatar has a display featuring a number of locally-made products — a couple of different oils and “globules” — along with a somewhat threadbare diorama.

I guess commercialization still has some way to go, but a start has been made. Another wild species with some commercial potential may be strawberries.

Wild Allium of various kinds is also sold in the market.

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Agricultural biodiversity stamped on

Those limelight-hogging publicity mavens at the Convention on Biological Diversity have done it again. A massive press release celebrates the fact that Syria recently became the 12th country to issue a set of postage stamps to celebrate the International Year of Biodiversity. Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary to the CBD had this to say:

I want to pay tribute to the countries that have made the effort to design and issue beautiful stamps as a way of reminding people of the importance and irreplaceable nature of the biodiversity of our world … Young people and adults alike can enjoy and take pleasure in these stamps, which will become permanent and memorable collector’s items.

And yes, you’re dead right, we’re about to get on our high horse again and moan about the (lack of) agricultural content of these stamps. I took a close look at the pictures the CBD sent out, and as usual there are almost no crops or livestock there. India’s features rice farmers — and an owl. Belarus has a couple of fish, which may or may not be edible, although I think Portugal’s are. Hong Kong’s and Singapore’s may feature edible tree fruits, but then again they may not; who can tell? The UK has a couple of whales (the dormouse is not the edible one) but given the UK’s stance on whales, it’s pretty safe to say they didn’t have food in mind.

Biodiversity stamps from Trinidad and Tobago

Let’s hear it, then, for Trinidad and Tobago, which did Select Hybrid Cacao, hot pepper diversity, water buffalo, agouti, leatherback turtles and fishermen, plus a couple of productive ecosystems.

Biodiversity stamps from Trinidad and Tobago

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Genebanks shenebanks

Why bother building and maintaining huge robotic genebanks, I hear you ask? They’ll just take over the world and we’ll end up having to deal with the Terminator in a few years’ time, no? Well, as it happens there are two pieces today on the Worldwatch Institute’s blog which explain the reasons. Yassir Islam of HarvestPlus says that researchers are “scour[ing] seed banks to find seeds that contain the desired nutrients and then breed these into popular varieties using conventional methods.” And Cary Fowler of the Global Crop Diversity Trust turns to Ug99:

Where do you suppose scientists are looking for a way to deal with the disease? Just as Professor Borlaug did, they are screening hundreds of varieties of wheat to find one that shows resistance to the disease. Where would we turn if we did not have that diversity available in genebanks?

What more do you need? Oh yeah:

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that a third of all genetic resources for food and agriculture have already been lost in the last 100 years.

Right. But at least it’s an improvement on 75%.

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Robotic genebanks

The National Genebank of China
There are about 1,700 genebanks in the world, according to the latest FAO survey, but no more than a handful are as large and high-tech as the National Crop Genebank at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science’s Institute of Crop Science in Beijing. This is the building that houses it.

And this is the corridor leading to the long-term cold store.

There’s a control room from which you can order a particular tray of accessions.

And here it is coming out.

But you can also go into one of the cold stores and pick out individual accessions by hand if you prefer.

The long-term genebank holds about 356,000 accessions of 735 species, including 72,000 of rice and 45,000 of wheat. The total capacity is about 400,000, so a new facility is being built, with a capacity of 1.5 million accessions. This long-term store is the apex of a national system comprising dozens of mid-term national and local seed genebanks spread throughout the country. Plus of course there are also field and in vitro collections. The whole collection in the national genebank is duplicated at another site in China. Not at Svalbard, though. Yet.