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Darwin in London

By Jacob van Etten

As the anniversaries of Darwin’s birth year (1809) and his Origin of Species (published in 1859) approach, London’s Natural History Museum has an exhibition on the great man. It takes you through his life and discoveries, paying equal attention to biography and biology. The exhibition opens with two mockingbird specimens, explaining their role in Darwin’s discovery of evolution. The famous finches are there, too, but apparently they played a less important role in the formation of Darwin’s theory. The most impressive part, I found, were the original letters exhibited, including a famous letter from his wife Emma, about religion, at the bottom of which Charles noted that he had cried about it for hours. The exhibition closes with a section on past and present responses to evolution theory.

Of course, I expected some stuff on agrobiodiversity. Darwin wrote a two-volume book on it, after all, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. Darwin used variation in domesticated animals and plants as a model for what happens in the wild. I wasn’t disappointed. The exhibition mentions dogs, horses and cabbages. It shows specimens of all the races of pigeons Darwin kept around Down House. Knowing Darwin’s hair style, I was surprised to learn that his London barber was an important source of information on domesticated biodiversity.

I’m not the only one who liked the exhibition. The lady at the bookshop said that the responses thus far had been very positive. It is on until 19 April 2009.

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Cocoa from tree to cup

News from both ends of the cacao value chain today. At the upstream end, new molecular marker work on over a thousand genebank accessions reveals that the species is divided into no less than 10 genetic clusters, rather than the conventionally recognized two. These show a clear geographic pattern: they are strung out along an east-west axis in the Amazon, probably reflecting, according to the authors, the location of ancient ridges (“palaeoarches”), which were barriers to dispersal not only for Theobroma but also for various fish groups. Meanwhile, at the downstream end, there’s an account of a visit to a “chocoholic mecca” in Santa Fe.

LATER. And, for the trifecta, news from somewhere around the middle of the value chain.

LATER STILL. What comes after trifecta?

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More water

More on that drip irrigation thing I Nibbled yesterday. David Zetland, the aquablogger sans pareil, has blogged a bit about this. On the PNAS paper, he had this to say:

Water has to go somewhere, and drip irrigation just controls that flow. Be a good cost-accountant and find out where else it goes. (There are losers and gainers on an individual basis, but society as a whole should just try to maximize overall benefit from water.)

I’m puzzled by “society as a whole”. Is that some overweening society, or just the outcome of individual actions?

An earlier post, in response to an email, revealed that Zetland, like me, had always though that drip would be more “efficient,” but that there are many factors that come into play.

It’s all about cost and benefit. When water is cheaper, it’s not too important to conserve it, but expensive water doesn’t necessarily mean that the “best” irrigation method is the one that uses the least water. (Although drip-irrigated rice uses less water, it also has a lower yield.)

So, it’s complex. Now, there’s a surprise. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were some decision-making tool that could tell the grower which system would provide the most crop per drop, taking into account, of course, the cost per drop?

And in related news, Reuters reports that Iraq plans to revive 2.5 million hectares of agricultural land by “sucking out the salt”. I’m not sure I understand the project fully. It seems to involve “pumping out the groundwater beneath the soil over several years”. Then what? Natural rainfall replenishes the groundwater? We shall see, but it sounds like a huge undertaking with no guarantees of success or even a reasonable return.

OK, so irrigation isn’t really about agrobiodiversity, but one can use agricultural biodiversity to take advantage of what water is available, and that’s a good enough reason to post.

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Send us your diversity

Rather than just complaining about how the rest of the natural world fails to give agricultural biodiversity due respect, I decided to bring them all here to see for themselves. My cracking wheeze: host Linnaeus’ Legacy, “A monthly carnival celebrating the diversity of life on this planet, and the methods we use to understand it.” Then, in the onrush of wonderful blog posts about diversity in general, I’ll just slip in a few select agrobiodiversity items to prove that we too have what it takes.

There are many ways to submit posts.

And they don’t have to be your own posts, they can be things that have struck you as interesting and worth sharing.

I plan to publish on Wednesday 10 December, so there’s still time.

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Genetically uniform bloggers

The bloggers of agro.agro.biodiver.seThrowing caution, and the principles of risk management, to the wind, agro.agro.biodiver.se bloggers gathered in a single location last week, and there’s the photograph to prove it. We won’t bother to name names, or to draw attention to the huge lack of diversity assembled. We will note that we all ate something different although we all drank the same stuff. And had a jolly good time.