Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
That’s Javier de la Torre talking about ecological niche modeling at GeoWeb. Well, I would qualify that by saying we have too little digitized data. Certainly for many crop wild relatives, for example. Javier was involved in a recent online mashup of the global protected area database. His GeoWeb slides are below, catch his talk on YouTube.
There’s a bit of an argy-bargy developing in the comments to Robert’s provocative post Inorganic farming. Anastasia raised the question of transgenics for fungal resistance, which Robert echoed. Patrick then waded in bullishly to ask why transgenics were needed, when breeder Tom Wagner “has created quite a number of potato lines totally resistant to late blight”. And that created a clamour from Robert to the effect that he couldn’t find any evidence of Wagner’s success on this front.
Two points.
First, although Patrick was perhaps too modest to say so, he has arranged for Tom Wagner to be at a meeting in Oxford, England, as part of a Greater European Tour that Tom is undertaking in the autumn. So anyone who wants to know about his selections for late blight resistance can get it straight from the horse’s mouth. And report it here, please.
Secondly, don’t panic. Scientists at the University of Dundee in Scotland and elsewhere have discovered a single gene that, they say, is the key to blight resistance. “We are really excited by the discovery of RXLR. This has provided a signature to search for proteins that are delivered inside host cells, where they may be exposed to plant defence surveillance systems,” said Professor Paul Birch, the team leader. Clearly it won’t be long before the threat of late blight is a thing of the past.
Robert asks the tough questions:
If there is demand for a diverse set of resistant and tasty varieties, and “there’s a lot available” why don’t breeders and seed companies supply? No demand? Too expensive? All in cahoots with Big Chemicals?
I think we need some in-depth research to tell us how large the “demand for diversity” pimple is on the rump of “big breeding”.
It’s a common misconception that all plants that enjoy heat need heat to survive. Anastasia says as much when she “goes out on a limb” to suggest that spinach won’t survive at -40°F, and then conflates spinach in winter with tomatoes in winter. I’m going to abuse proprietorship to point out both that spinach is a cool-weather crop — despite what they do to it in California — and that it doesn’t need to be growing in order to be freshly available year round, although I concede that -40°F is probably pushing it somewhat. (Who would want a salad under those conditions anyway?)
Many plants, and spinach is a prime example, can survive freezing. They do so even better if they are primed by exposure to cold temperatures before the freeze hits, which is the natural way of things. If you sow spinach in late summer, and let it get to be a good size before hard winter arrives, it will survive reasonably well given minimal protection in the form of a cold frame or a polytunnel. And it will be ready to grow away again as soon as temperatures start to warm up again in the spring. Not just spinach either: the list is long.
This idea, of growing plants in the autumn and protecting them for harvest through the winter and an early start in spring, is nothing new. Victorian gardeners were past masters. In modern times it is most closely associated with the name of Eliot Coleman. As it happens, he prefers organic methods, but don’t let that put you off. His book is wonderfully practical and there’s a bit more background here.
And of course there’s more to leafy-greens-that-aren’t-lettuce than spinach, but surely I don’t need to belabour that point here. My conclusion is that while it takes planning and foresight, it is perfectly possible to have access to a local diverse diet in cold winters.
Just back from Heartland and, before the jetlag overpowers me, I really want to thank everyone at the North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station (NC7) in Ames, Iowa for their incredible hospitality over the past week. I know this will get to them because a couple of the people working at the station told me they visit us occasionally. Grateful for that too!
The ARS facility at Ames is the oldest of the US plant introduction stations. It’s main crop is maize, of which it has a collection of about 20,000 accessions from all over the world.
But there are also some 30,000 accessions of a bunch of other crops and wild species.
Many of the crops require careful management of pollinators during regeneration and multiplication. Fortunately, there hasn’t been any colony collapse disorder among the beehives used and maintained on the station.
Like many of the active genebanks of the USDA National Plant Germplasm System, the one at Ames benefits from an almost symbiotic relationship with nearby Iowa State University, with some staff also having university duties and many students gaining hands-on experience in the genebank.
Also nearby is a fascinating prairie remnant, Doolittle Prairie, which houses about a dozen crop wild relatives. I’ll say a bit more about that in due course, but here’s what the place looks like at sunset.
Thanks again to everyone at NC7!
