- Rapid assessments of the impact of COVID-19 on the availability of quality seed to farmers: Advocating immediate practical, remedial and preventative action. Structural weaknesses ruthlessly exposed.
- Initial Investment in Diversity Is the Efficient Thing to Do for Resilient Forest Landscape Restoration. Spend the money on securing diverse seeds up front, you cheapskates. No word on what the effect of the pandemic.
- Ten golden rules for reforestation to optimize carbon sequestration, biodiversity recovery and livelihood benefits. Right seeds, right species, right place, the right way. But save forests first.
- The impact of near-real-time deforestation alerts across the tropics. Getting alerts saves forests, especially in protected areas, but only in Africa.
- Integration of georeferenced and genetic data for the management of biodiversity in sheep genetic resources in Brazil. Travel 300 km for a genetically different sheep. I wonder if it’s the same for trees.
- Worldwide occurrence records suggest a global decline in bee species richness. 25% fewer species in GBIF in past 25 years. Yeah but there may be alternative explanations for that, as a bee taxonomist points out. Non-Twitter link available too.
- Investigating genetic relationship of Brassica juncea with B. nigra via virtual allopolyploidy and hexaploidy strategy. Wild relative could be used to synthesize some really cool mustards.
- Seed storage behavior of Musa balbisiana Colla, a wild progenitor of bananas and plantains – Implications for ex situ germplasm conservation. Orthodox, but difficult to regenerate.
- Mineral nutrient composition of vegetables, fruits and grains: The context of reports of apparent historical declines. No evidence for systematic declines in micronutrient concentrations.
- A Study on the Biodiversity of Pigmented Andean Potatoes: Nutritional Profile and Phenolic Composition. Lots of diversity in micronutrients in traditional landraces. No word on temporal changes.
- Status and prospects of genome‐wide association studies in plants. Dissecting complex traits has never been easier, and is getting easier. It says here.
- A review of the interactions between biodiversity, agriculture, climate change, and international trade: research and policy priorities. Policy priorities? Increased recognition of international trade in biodiversity targets, goals, and policy; and increased communication of the impacts of food on biodiversity.
- The Impact of Diversified Farming Practices on Terrestrial Biodiversity Outcomes and Agricultural Yield Worldwide: A Systematic Review Protocol. Looking forward to this one.
The economics of biodiversity includes genebanks?
It’s 600-odd pages, but the Dasgupta Review on The Economics of Biodiversity, out today, may turn out to be worth reading in full, if these results of quick searches are anything to go by:
…widespread use of individual strains could deepen problems caused by the lack of genetic diversity in crops; introducing resistance into a wide variety of cultivars would counter this.
…future crop security in agriculture and industry is reliant on maintaining plant genetic diversity (Jump, Marchant, and Peñuelas, 2009). Another example of keeping our options open is the development of seed banks. Seed banks store the living genetic diversity of plants, in the form of seeds, to enable future use. Various types of seed bank exist, to support different sectors and interventions, e.g. agriculture, forestry, restoration and conservation. They provide a secure and relatively low-cost method of conserving a large amount of genetic material in a relatively small space.
…
The Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change Project was a global initiative covering 24 countries that focused on the seeds of wild relatives of 29 of the world’s most important crop species (Castañeda-Álvarez et al. 2016). Participants in this project have conserved 242 taxa of crop wild relatives. These collections will be used to identify traits of value in crop breeding, such as tolerance of heat, drought, salinity and waterlogging, resistance to pests and diseases, resistance to root rot, and yield.
…
Sustainable intensification seeks to use contemporary methods to increase crop yields. For example, maintaining soil fertility, improving water use efficiency and reducing chemical inputs can be achieved through zero tillage or intercropping with two or more crops. Other approaches include plant breeding for temperature and pest tolerance, creating bio-controls for crop pests and pathogens, and reducing fossil fuel use in agriculture…
In the meantime, read the hot takes from The Guardian and Kew.
LATER:
Brainfood: Livestock edition
- Recent land use and management changes decouple the adaptation of livestock diversity to the environment. The diversity of traditional livestock breeds used to be closely related to climate in Spain, but this is breaking down.
- Rationalizing ex situ collection of reproductive materials for endangered livestock breed conservation. Also in Spain, so I hope these guys are talking to the above.
- Applying the zoo model to conservation of threatened exceptional plant species. Not to mention livestock in Spain? Basically talking about a pedigree-based approach.
- Selection and drift reduce genetic variation for milk yield in Manech Tête Rousse dairy sheep. A bit like this (see above)?
- Influence of land tenure interventions on human well-being and environmental outcomes. Fairly good evidence from meta-review that formal titling has good social and environmental outcomes. But what did it do for traditional breeds, right?
- Lipid residues in pottery from the Indus Civilisation in northwest India. Not as much dairy as thought, and mainly non-ruminant fats. Definitely traditional breeds though.
- Ancient proteins provide evidence of dairy consumption in eastern Africa. Starting when lactase persistence was still rare or absent.
- Genome-scale sequencing and analysis of human, wolf and bison DNA from 25,000 year-old sediment. Sediment? Yep, sediment.
- Effect of dry heat on seed germination of Desmodium and Stylosanthes species. Could be used rather than mechanical scarification, thus saving time and effort. Livestock gotta eat.
The grace of crop diversity
I wrote one of the prefaces to the catalogue of the exhibition Abundant Future: Cultivating Diversity in Garden, Farm, and Field. Hope you like it. Do think about buying the catalogue, if you can. And, indeed, the artwork.
A rose is a rose is a rose, the poet says. Well, that’s one way of looking at it of course. But I think we know, deep down, that maybe, just maybe, it’s not really the best way. There are in fact dozens of species of roses, and thousands of cultivars, differing in scent, color, growth habit, flowering time, and name. And for those who don’t like thorns, there are lots of other types of flowers. That’s a good thing: it makes our life better that roses are not all the same. We know that almost instinctively.
We don’t think about it as much as we should, or even as much as we do about roses, but it’s the same with the plants we eat. We can choose from several different types of apples when we go to the supermarket, for example, with dozens more out there, if we know where to look. And there used to be even more: apples for munching raw, apples for baking pies, apples for cider, apples for juicing.
It’s not just apples though. Over the millennia during which agriculture has been practiced on this lucky planet, farmers from the Fertile Crescent to the highlands of Mexico to the river valleys of China have developed myriad different versions of each of their crops. In the same way that a rose is not just a rose, and a dachshund not a labrador, there are thousands of different types of wheat and buckwheat, of potatoes and tomatoes.
Not an autumn harvest season goes by that there isn’t something in the press about someone, usually described as a fruit detective, rediscovering a long-lost apple in an abandoned orchard or overgrown backyard. Rare, local varieties, with funny, evocative names, and unusual colors and tastes, are much loved, it seems, at least in their absence.
So we know – we feel – that such heirlooms are important; but really, what can we do about it if they keep disappearing? It’s sad to see them go, but we’ll surely survive with fewer types of apples, as we would with fewer roses in our gardens.
Well, maybe we would be able to limp along with fewer apples, squashes or zucchini on our suburban supermarket shelves, or even our organic produce stores. But where do we draw line? What if we end up with only one apple, and then a new disease comes along and wipes it out? Would we be willing to have no apples at all? What about no rice at all? Or, heaven forbid, no coffee.
Some of the varieties that have been lost might have turned out to have resistance to disease, or to have a market-beating taste. We don’t know. In too many cases, we’ll never know. And then of course there are the wild relatives of these crops, such as the wild plums and grapes in this exhibition. Ancient farmers selected only a few plants from the progenitors of crops, in only a few places. A lot of diversity was left literally by the wayside as agriculture developed.
Sometimes unremarkable or even downright weedy – though not, it must emphatically be said, in the case of the wild plums and grapes featured here – crop relatives often have genes that their cultivated descendants would dearly like to have back. The latest data suggests that two fifths of wild plants are at risk of extinction: a lot of potentially useful species and genes that could soon be gone forever. Genes for coping with drought, or high temperatures; with new pests and diseases; with new demands by industry, or shoppers. We don’t really know even what we don’t know is out there. That’s bad enough, but it’s not all.
No, a rose is not just a rose, and as this exhibition also triumphantly shows, a quince is not just a quince, a radish not just a radish, an eggplant not just an eggplant, a pumpkin not just a pumpkin. There is so much to celebrate in the differences that these artists have captured in their paintings of different crops and varieties. They represent raw material for the plant breeder, ways of making a living for farmers, heritage for local communities. And, for us all, they are, simply, beautiful – in look and taste and memories.
As another poet said, “there is a grace in wild variety surpassing rule and order.”
Getting to grips with ABS
Plant scientist need to have a voice in the policies and practices that are developed internationally. We urge plant scientist to become familiar with the issues in their country and internationally and contribute to the development of effective approaches at all levels. We need to be proactive in developing a code of practice for plant scientists that provides leadership to policy and law makers in governments globally.
“The issues” in question are those concerning access to digital sequence information in particular, and it seems the Global Plant Council have set up a working group “to raise awareness on obligations to respect access and benefit-sharing [ABS] rights under the Convention on Biodiversity, the FAO Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, and the Nagoya Protocols on Access and Benefit Sharing.”
Do contact them if you’re interested in finding out more.