Global study of seed consumption uncovers wider risk to plant species

Deborah Smith in the University of New South Wales Newsroom: The first worldwide study of animals and the seeds they eat has overturned a long-held assumption – that large animals mainly eat large seeds. The finding by UNSW Australia scientists has implications for conservation showing that a wider variety of plants than is often thought could be at risk if large animals go extinct and do not disperse their seeds.

In a comprehensive study, UNSW’s Si-Chong Chen and Professor Angela Moles compiled and analysed data on more than 13,000 animal-seed interactions, based on previously published reports. “It is the first broad-scale study of the relationship between animal body mass and ingested seed size ever undertaken,” says Ms Chen, a PhD candidate in the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.

“We covered all vertebrate groups – fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. And we included animals from many different areas – from the Arctic tundra to the tropical rainforests.”...The smallest seeds in the study were the tiny seeds of the mountain snowberry, and they were eaten by the smallest animals in the study – skinks on the Chatham Islands near New Zealand. The largest seeds were the 9-centimetre long seeds of the African tropical forest tree, Balanites wilsonia. They were eaten by the largest animals in the study – 4-tonne African elephants.

“It has long been predicted that as the body size of animals increases so does the size of the seeds they ingest,” says Ms Chen. “Big animals do eat some big seeds from fleshy fruits. But the prediction is wrong because it overlooks the fact that big animals like buffalos, cows, deer and zebras also accidentally vacuum up hundreds of small seeds as they graze on short grassy vegetation.”...

Sunflower with bee, shot by Rasbak, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Include genes in climate change plans, urges FAO

Jan Piotrowski in SciDev.net: The UN is mooting the inclusion of genetic resources in guidelines for national climate change adaptation plans to support food security in developing countries.  Guidelines adopted this month by the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture within the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) set out step-by-step advice for safeguarding a healthy gene pool. This includes ensuring access to a wide variety of plant, animal and microbe species through seed banks, environmental protection programmes and research.

The guidelines chime with advice from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which helps countries create national adaptation plans. But according to an FAO statement, it remains to be seen whether the FAO’s guidelines will become an official part of the UNFCCC guidelines on national adaptation plans. The FAO commission is pushing for this to happen, it said in its statement.

Similar guidelines already exist for health and water issues, so it is time that genetic resources are acknowledged in the adaptation process, says Linda Collette, the secretary of the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

“People do not realise the importance of genetic resources in the climate change debate,” she says. “Having the right seeds and breeds is absolutely essential for climate change adaptation.”...

A baobab in Zimbabwe split open to show the seeds, shot by JackyR, Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Indigenous mountain farmers unite on climate change

Bhrikuti Rai in SciDev.net: Farmers from 25 indigenous mountain communities in ten countries have come together to share traditional knowledge that could help them to mitigate climate change and to lobby governments for greater recognition of their unique knowledge.

The International Network of Mountain Indigenous Peoples was formed at a workshop in Bhutan last month (26 May-1 June). It includes communities from Bhutan, China, India, Kyrgyzstan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Taiwan, Tajikistan and Thailand.

Member communities from Bhutan, China and Peru had already agreed to exchange seeds at a meeting held in Peru earlier this year (26 April-2 May). The agreement was extended to the other members at the most recent meeting.

The farmers say the network will enable communities to access new seed varieties that are more resilient to pests and drought; will help increase their crop diversity; and will reduce their dependence on corporate-owned seeds.

“Learning about experiences and strategies from other farming communities — based on local knowledge systems — through this network reaffirms people’s beliefs and faith in their own systems, values and traditional knowledge,” says Reetu Sogani, an activist who works with the International Institute for Environment and Development’s (IIED’s) Smallholder Innovation for Resilience project, which was involved in the workshop....

Terrace farms on Bolivia's Cordillera Central, shot by Christopher Walker, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

'Seed freedom is the answer to hunger and malnutrition'

Vandana Shiva in the "Health and well-being hub" at the Guardian (UK): What happens to the seed affects the web of life. When seed is living, regenerative and diverse, it feeds pollinators, soil organisms and animals - including humans. When seed is non-renewable, bred for chemicals, or genetically engineered with toxic Bt or Roundup Ready genes, diversity disappears.

In recent years, beekeepers have been losing 25% of their hives each winter. According to a scientific study in 2008, bees and pollinators contribute more than €153bn annually to agriculture. Chemically-farmed soils, sprayed with herbicides and pesticides kill the beneficial organisms that create soil fertility and protect plants.

Organic seeds and organic farming do not just protect human health; they protect the health and wellbeing of all.

With industrial seeds and industrial agriculture, the diversity of plants and crops disappears. India had 200,000 rice varieties before the "green revolution" in the 1970s, which relied on pesticides and fertilisers to avert famine in India. This diversity was replaced by monocultures.

Today the fastest expanse in acreage is of genetically engineered corn and soya, because they are patented and corporations can collect royalties from farmers. When seed freedom disappears and farmers become dependent on GMO seeds, they in effect become seed slaves.

According to the National Bureau of Crime Records, more than 284,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since seed monopolies were established in India. Gandhi spun cotton for our freedom. Today GMO Bt cotton has enslaved our farmers in debt, and pushed them to suicide. And 95% cotton seed is controlled by one company: Monsanto.

When culture is eroded, biodiversity is eroded. And when control over seeds becomes big business, diversity disappears faster. Diversity is a product of care, connection and cultural pride....

Home-grown seeds of Detroit Dark Red beets (Beta vulgaris), an earthy-tasting, dark red, culinary beet. Shot by Downtowngal, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Rural women in Peru key to adaptation of seeds to climate change

Mariela Jara in AlertNet via IPS:  For ages, rural women in the Peruvian highlands have been selecting and storing seeds, ensuring their preservation. But the authorities have failed to tap into this storehouse of knowledge and experience, despite the contributions it could make to the design of effective policies for adaptation to climate change, which poses a growing threat to the women�s livelihoods.Peru's campesinas or peasant women have played this role from time immemorial, handing down their knowledge by oral transmission. But today their traditional know-how is insufficient to help them endure unseasonal rainfall, extreme frosts, gale-force winds and other climate change-related phenomena.

The national meteorology and hydrology service projects a 0.2 to 0.5 degree Celsius rise in temperature in Peru by 2030-2050 due to global warming. As a result, the rainy season will continue to change, which will have a heavy impact on agricultural production.

Experts predict that the difficulties already faced by families who depend on agriculture will thus be aggravated, and that women will especially feel the effects, due to gender inequality. But they also say it is possible to start coming up with viable medium to long-term adaptation measures.

...But the sociologist told IPS that although women suffer the brunt of this situation, they can also develop skills that allow them to play an active role in adaptation, as shown by the Flora Tristán Centre in the southern Andean region of Cuzco and the northern coastal region of Piura, where it is carrying out a project on climate justice and rural women....

Women farming in the Peruvian highlands, around 1940

Plants at risk from seed dispersal threats

Mark Kinver in BBC News: Drivers of biodiversity loss, such as habitat fragmentation and climate change, are threatening seed dispersal around the globe, a study has warned. Scientists said plant species that were unable to adapt were being driven "to the brink of extinction in most human-modified landscapes".

The way seeds were spread in landscapes had to be given more attention within conservation schemes, they added. The findings have been published in the journal Biological Conservation.

"The global pollination crisis has been acknowledged as being a major concern," said co-author Soumya Prasad, an ecologist at the Centre for Ecological Science at the Indian Institute of Science. "But there is also a growing crisis around the world when it comes to seed dispersal, yet it is not fully recognised or understood.

"So we reviewed existing information to synthesis it in a form that was not only useful for researchers but also for land managers."

Dr Prasad said that the international team of scientists found that factors identified as the main contributors to biodiversity loss (habitat fragmentation, hunting and over-harvesting, invasive species and climate change) were altering seed dispersal patterns "in very complex ways"....

Landscape with Grazing Donkey. Fragment of a ‘Rest on the Flight into Egypt’. Painted between 1500 and 1524

New global search to save endangered crop wild relatives

Science Daily: The Global Crop Diversity Trust has announced a major global search to systematically find, gather, catalogue, use, and save the wild relatives of wheat, rice, beans, potato, barley, lentils, chickpea, and other essential food crops, in order to help protect global food supplies against the imminent threat of climate change, and strengthen future food security.

The initiative, led by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, working in partnership with national agricultural research institutes, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), is the largest one ever undertaken with the tough wild relatives of today's main food crops. These wild plants contain essential traits that could be bred into crops to make them more hardy and versatile in the face of dramatically different climates expected in the coming years. Norway is providing US$50 million towards this important contribution to food security.

…Crop wild relatives make up only a few percent of the world's genebank holdings, yet their contribution to commercial agriculture alone is estimated at more than US$100 billion per year. One example dates back to the 1970s, when an outbreak of grassy stunt virus, which prevents the rice plant from flowering and producing grain, decimated rice harvests across Asia. Scientists from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) screened more than 10,000 samples of wild and locally-cultivated rice plants for resistance to the disease and found it in a wild relative, Oryza nivara, growing in India. The gene has been incorporated into most new varieties since the discovery.

"This project represents one of the most concrete steps taken to date to ensure that agriculture, and humanity, adapts to climate change. At a more fundamental level, the project also demonstrates the importance of biodiversity and genetic resources for human survival," said Erik Solheim, Minister of the Environment and International Development of Norway….

Bales of alfalfa, shot by Gary D Robson, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Fresh hope for Pavlovsk seed bank

Saif Bonar in BSR Russia: In 1926, Russian Botanist, Nikolai Vavilov founded the Pavolvsk Experimental Station, 30km outside St Petersburg. It has since grown to become the largest collection of its type in the world with over 5,000 types of berries and fruits. The site, some 500 hectares is funded on a shoe-string, the average wage is $270 per month, yet 90% of its collection cannot be found in any other research station or gene bank in the world. Despite this, property developers are keen to destroy the facility to make way for upmarket country retreats or Dachas for the St Petersburg to elite to retire to at the weekend.

The announcement of Pavlovks's impending doom, in the early Summer of this year, startled the world's scientific community. A social media campaign urged people to send Twitter messages to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. A more conventional petition also did the rounds by email and the media got behind the campaign applying futher pressure on the Russian government.

Unlike many research facilities and seed banks, the Pavlovsk facility is a field genebank, so its collection sits, lives and grows in the ground. This makes transporting or moving it elsewhere a painstaking and expensive challenge which the facilities director claims could take up to 15 years to complete.

Giving into the global pressure, President Medvedev ordered an inspection of the facility and the proposed plots to be auctioned off on 23 September. On 31st August, the facility was visited without warning by a range of government officials, representing the Russian Housing Development Foundation (who own the land and want to sell it), The Public Chamber and the Accounts Chamber. As a result of their impromptu inspection, the team conceded that the land which they intended to sell did in-fact house some of the Vavilov botanical collection and agreed to a postponement of their auction, which had been schedule for late September….

The Church of Mary Magdalene in Pavlovsk, from 1900