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Hold the phone! It’s a seriously endangered crop wild relative

It has happened, and January not even over yet. The IUCN’s Red List Species of the Day, which we are privileged to feature in a little widget over there on the right, has hit paydirt with a crop wild relative: Apium bermejoi, which Wikipedia says is “closely related to the wild form of celery”. What are the chances that it could confer resistance to some of the many pests and diseases that celery is martyr to? One expert told us: “my feeling is that it has not been used in celery breeding to any effect”. Anyone know differently?

A. bermejoi seeds are in storage, although in the wild there may be fewer than 100 individuals hanging in there on the island of Menorca.

Its habitat is often trampled by passing fishermen and hikers, or more seriously disrupted by off-road motorcyclists. In addition, Apium bermejoi must compete with a wide variety of other plant species for essential water and nutrients. Its present decline seems to be related to a series of drier summers, showing that this species is very sensitive to climate change.

That’s a lot to cope with.

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Photographs of Old Hawaii and its taros see light of day

John Cho — he of the leaf blight-tolerant hybrids — has just posted some wonderful archive photographs of old Hawaiian taro culture to his Facebook page. He kindly agreed to us featuring one of them.

Here’s the backstory.

The images are from photographs archived in the State Archives that I selected and had them scanned by a third party. Sure would have been nice and less costly if the Archives digitized all the images that they have and allow the public to download them. But that is not the case and I had to hire a professional photographer contracted by the Archives to photograph then scan black and white negative images of taro photos that I had selected from the collection. I had planned to eventually put together a taro publication summarizing taro production and culture in Old Hawaii but have not quite gotten off the ground as yet. I decided to at least share some of the images on Facebook for the public to see and hopefully some day I would get off my duff and put the publication together. I also have several scans of taro culture from the Bishop Museum but require their permission to post their images on Facebook.

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Bill Gates on genebanks and their databases

From Bill Gates’ annual letter on the work of his foundation:

There are three things that modern agrotechnology brings to this seed improvement process. The first is simply the ability to gather plant samples from all over the world and use databases to keep track of thousands of plants grown under different conditions.

The second is sequencing and the third is transgenics, in case you were wondering. One of these days, I’d like to take Mr Gates down into Genebank Database Hell. But hey, we’re working on it. And the Foundation is helping.

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How they breed Belgian Blue cattle

Swanning around the intertubes, as one does while waiting for bread to rise, I happened upon a clip from a National Geographic film called Extreme Genes. The clip gives an insight into one of the “double muscled” breeds of cattle, the Belgian Blue. You’ll note that everyone involved is at pains to point out how natural all this selection is, which is very reassuring.