Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Robert weighs in on Taro:
Is anyone producing taro from seed in Hawaii? Or is this something that happens unintentionally (through “volunteersâ€)?
“taro is used to make the starchy food poi AND is revered as an ancestor of the Hawaiian people.â€
Ancesterovores! And THAT is legal?
Jeremy comments: Not only legal, but reasonably common, put that way.
A press release from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (we picked it up at Modern Ghana.com) says that improved varieties of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) are giving farmers 55% greater profits. The new varieties produce high quality grains and are resistant to the parasitic weed Striga. That’s great, and I have some questions.
What do we know about the heritage and breeding of the new varieties? Are they going to need replacement themselves, as pests and diseases adapt to them?
At least one was trialled in 1998 in California, and found to be possibly the best choice as a cover crop or green manure there. I wonder whether it was taken up?
Most interesting, to my mind, can we please get the full story? A quick poke around the intertubes reveals that one of these varieties — IT89KD-288 — has been around in the wild, as it were, since at least 1993, the year of “its accidental release to one farmer”. What happened? And what does it’s subsequent spread tell us about informal seed systems, farmer preferences, the role of extension services, etc. etc?
You may remember a piece in SciDev a couple of years back which justly celebrated EMBRAPA’s genebank. There was an brief, intriguing statement towards the end:
This has been done by several indigenous communities — such as the Krahô, Guarani and Indian tribes from the Xingu river basin in Brazil — that approached Embrapa asking for primitive plants seeds that no longer germinate. The species were important not only to their agricultural system but also to their cultural rituals.
I had heard of this “restoration,” of course: a great story, dutifully trotted out when it is necessary to give an example of direct use of genebank materials, one not involving breeders. But it emerged during the meeting I’m attending that the conventional narrative is not quite correct. It turns out that the seeds that were “returned” to the Krahô had actually not been collected from them, but from a neighbouring tribe, in Tocatins. Ok, it is still direct use of ex situ conserved material by indigenous communities, but somehow not as resonant as formerly, at least for me. I hate it when that happens.
BBC News says that “regional breeds of sheep face a heightened risk of disease because of their tendency to remain together in one location”. It is summarising a report from The Sheep Trust, which was founded during the epidemic of Foot and Mouth disease in the United Kingdom in 2001. That’s important.
What the Trust’s report seems to be saying that when there is an outbreak of disease, the regional, heritage, breeds are vulnerable because they are concentrated in a single geographical location. But that does not put them at greater risk of disease. It puts them at greater risk of being culled as part of government’s policy-based response to the disease. If the policy is to slaughter all animals within, say, 5 km of an affected farm, regardless of whether they have the disease or not, then yes, geographical concentration is a threat to the breed. But it isn’t the disease as such that is the threat, it is the policy response. It is even possible that the policy would wipe out flocks that contain genetic resistance.
What’s the answer? Given that regional breeds are interesting precisely because they are adapted to a small region, simply spreading them about might not be much of a solution. Gene-banking? Well, that’s where we came in: The Sheep Trust is an outgrowth of the Heritage Genebank. So what exactly do they want?
“We are strongly recommending that new measures are put in place to protect these important genetic resources now that their vulnerability has been so clearly demonstrated,†says Professor Dianna Bowles OBE, founder and Chair of The Sheep Trust.
No further details are forthcoming. How very frustrating. Maybe all they want is government money for the sheep genebank.
Inoculated Mind on Making breeding illegal:
[I]f “Changing the basic structure of the sacred Hawaiian taro plant†is made illegal … then they are basically legislating that natural genetic recombination, outcrossing, etc, does not change the genetic structure of taro.
Note the interesting use of the word “sacred†repeatedly when describing the ‘need’ to ‘protect’ the plant from genetic engineering. Yay for misusing religion for political purposes. The obvious counter-argument is that not allowing researchers to defend Taro against future diseases violates the sanctity of the holy plant.
Over to you, descendents of the sacred taro.