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A date with wild dates

A friend is going to Crete for his holidays, so I naturally suggested that he visit the populations of the wild relative of the date palm, Phoenix theophrasti, which is rare, endangered and sort-of endemic to the island. Actually there are apparently some populations in southern Turkey too, but I didn’t know that at the time. Ok, but where exactly do I find it, he asked? Give me lat/longs.

Well, I’m not sure if I managed that, but after a certain amount of googling I happened across what seems to be the mother lode of P. theophrasti information. And all conveniently packaged in a pdf pamphlet. It’s been produced as part of an intriguing project called “CRETAPLANT: A Pilot Network of Plant Micro-Reserves in Western Crete.” Great that one of the plants/habitats being targeted is a crop wild relative. Coincidentally, the genome of the crop itself has just been sequenced.

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A.B. Chapman Lectures in Animal Breeding and Genetics

I’m informed by DAD-Net that the A.B. Chapman Lectures in Animal Breeding and Genetics have been presented annually at the University of Wisconsis-Madison since 1994 by leading international scholars in the genetic improvement of animals, and that this year’s lectures were given by Prof. Miguel Angel Toro, Departamento de Produccion Animal, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain, on May 4 and 5. Prof. Toro gave two talks, on “Principles of Conservation of Animal Genetic Resources” and on “Mating Allocation in Genomic Selection.” Did anyone out there see them, in particular the first, either in person or live on the internet? Let us know. In any case, it looks like they’ll eventually be available for downloading.

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Diversity on air

I’ve been listening to a radio programme about diversity in action. Called The Evolution Boomerang, from Soundprint, it examines three cases where diversity is important to agriculture and the environment. There’s a segment on GMO cotton and insect resistance, a segment on the need for genetic diversity at salmon hatcheries, and a segment on selecting bacteria to degrade a chemical that had never existed on Earth before humans manufactured it.

All good stuff, if you have half an hour to spare. You will need Real Player to listen.

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Mapping Ugandan wetlands to protect them

Want to know where Ugandans can make the most money from harvesting papyrus? Here you go:

uganda

This map is one of a whole series on Ugandan wetlands — their potential and the threats they face — that has just been published by the World Resources Institute 1 under the title Mapping a Better Future: How Spatial Analysis Can Benefit Wetlands and Reduce Poverty in Uganda.

One of the co-authors, Paul Mafabi , commissioner of the Wetlands Management Department in Uganda’s Ministry of Water and Environment, had this to say at the launch:

These maps and analysis enable us to identify and place an economic value on the nation’s wetlands. They show where wetland management can have the greatest impacts on reducing poverty.

There are probably some wild rice relatives lurking in these wetlands too, let’s not forget.

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The giant pumpkin story

Jules Janick, professor of horticulture at Purdue, wrote a wonderfully informative and entertaining brief history of giant pumpkins in last September’s Chronica Horticulturae (it starts on page 16). Regular competitions have been going on in the US since 1900, arising from state agricultural fairs.

The giant round orange phenotypes of C. maxima appear to be in a narrow gene pool out of “Atlantic Giant” (oblong phenotypes are called “Dill’s Atlantic Giant” developed by William Dill, a Canadian from Nova Scotia, Canada)… “Atlantic Giant” and related huge show pumpkins trace their origin to the cultivar “Mammoth,” recorded in the seed trade as far back as 1834…

Despite this narrow genepool, the genetic gains have been phenomenal (although of course cultural practices play a part too), as this graph of world records of pumpkin fruit weight from 1857 to 2007 shows:

pumpkin

The current mark stands at almost 800 kg. Seed of top specimens changes hands at huge prices (up to $850 for a single seed). Prof. Janick suggests that horticultural science has ignored this record of success.

Someone has accused academics in the agricultural arena of merely proving that the practices achieved by the best growers are correct. I suggest the academic and scientific community cooperate on this engaging problem for the delight of the public everywhere.