Genetic diversity won't be the opening skit on Saturday Night Live any time soon. It could be but it would take an exceptionally clever delivery.
CNN throws a headline about the Doomsday Vault and describes a current situation in which some of the seeds 'archived' in cold storage in the Arctic are being used. Today is not Doomsday so we conclude the storage is not a Doomsday Vault. If it were Doomsday, we would all be dead so the headline is annoying.
In fact, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a 'Doomsday Vault' but that kind of hysterical labeling sells short the mission and purpose of the Vault and exactly because of the story CNN has just run. (CNN: Arctic 'Doomsday Vault' opens to retrieve vital seeds for Syria)
The Svalbard Vault stores an astonishing number and variety of seeds and you can read more on the official Web site: Svalbard Global Seed Vault
A Global Backstop
The vault hold the seeds of many tens of thousands of varieties of essential food crops such as beans, wheat and rice. In total, the vault now holds seeds of more than 4000 plant species. These seed samples are duplicates of seed sample stores in national, regional and international gene banks.
Excerpt from the site for the Svalbard Vault in Norway.
There's another recent Ithaka blog article, From Bananas We See the Actual Danger of GMO, and that one addresses specifically genetic diversity in a different context. Banana crops have been devastated previously because the world's crops are created, typically, by cloning a single variety. If any disease comes and afflicts that variety then all of them go down and that happened in 1965. The large-scale growers did not learn and the same mono-clonal environment exists in banana plantations again now.
GMO will create the same mono-clonal risk because of the proprietary interest of Monsanto or whichever other corporate entity owns the rights to it. Whether normal capitalist competition will be enough to ensure that does not happen remains to be seen as the willingness of corporations for acting responsibly has not been notable in the history of any of them. Therefore, the same risk can come through over-dependence on any single strain of GMO crop and for exactly the same reason as exists with bananas right now.
Trying to make this kind of material suitable for tabloids isn't going to work and it marginalizes any intention to inform when anyone tries to force it to work. CNN is trying to defeat TEGO, something known to teachers as the time to try something else because ... Their Eyes Glaze Over. CNN takes the reverse course and tries to dazzle you with the headline but then goes to TEGO in the article.
There has been some thought here in the Rockhouse about doing a scribe about mitosis and meiosis, the processes by which cells replicate themselves at the chromosomal level. That sounds far less than sexy but these are the actual sexual processes in the combinations of chromosomes which make you. Half come from one parent and half come from the other. Mitosis and Meiosis are how that works since they're the processes which take apart the chromosomes and put them together again.
Those genetic processes are germane to the overall topic of diversity because they're the processes by which some trait in one of the stored seeds is re-introduced out in the field. Maybe the stored seed is much better at withstanding drought and that becomes more desirable in the field as the Earth warms.
Mitosis and Meiosis are the processes by which the trait of drought resistance will be introduced, at the chromosomal level, back to the world. In English that means you will plant the seed and cross-pollinate another strain of the plant from this one to get a hybrid which has a 50/50 chance of having the trait you want. That doesn't mean it's dumb luck but rather it's a 50/50 split exactly and it's because of the Laws of Mendelian Genetics.
The details about Mendel go beyond the intention which is to show the topic goes deeply technical but dressing that with buzz words won't help in making it more approachable.
What I know of this I learned from my ol' Dad talking about science on "Doorway to Knowledge" for housewives in Sydney at 11am each morning. He spoke clearly without any professorial posturing and he did not patronize by speaking down in any way. He knew people who were listening were not stupid or they would not be interesting in learning. He was exceptionally good in communicating complex things in proper English rather than scientific jargon ... plus he looked like a bearded stud on TV.
CNN throws a headline about the Doomsday Vault and describes a current situation in which some of the seeds 'archived' in cold storage in the Arctic are being used. Today is not Doomsday so we conclude the storage is not a Doomsday Vault. If it were Doomsday, we would all be dead so the headline is annoying.
In fact, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a 'Doomsday Vault' but that kind of hysterical labeling sells short the mission and purpose of the Vault and exactly because of the story CNN has just run. (CNN: Arctic 'Doomsday Vault' opens to retrieve vital seeds for Syria)
The Svalbard Vault stores an astonishing number and variety of seeds and you can read more on the official Web site: Svalbard Global Seed Vault
The vault hold the seeds of many tens of thousands of varieties of essential food crops such as beans, wheat and rice. In total, the vault now holds seeds of more than 4000 plant species. These seed samples are duplicates of seed sample stores in national, regional and international gene banks.
Excerpt from the site for the Svalbard Vault in Norway.
There's another recent Ithaka blog article, From Bananas We See the Actual Danger of GMO, and that one addresses specifically genetic diversity in a different context. Banana crops have been devastated previously because the world's crops are created, typically, by cloning a single variety. If any disease comes and afflicts that variety then all of them go down and that happened in 1965. The large-scale growers did not learn and the same mono-clonal environment exists in banana plantations again now.
GMO will create the same mono-clonal risk because of the proprietary interest of Monsanto or whichever other corporate entity owns the rights to it. Whether normal capitalist competition will be enough to ensure that does not happen remains to be seen as the willingness of corporations for acting responsibly has not been notable in the history of any of them. Therefore, the same risk can come through over-dependence on any single strain of GMO crop and for exactly the same reason as exists with bananas right now.
Trying to make this kind of material suitable for tabloids isn't going to work and it marginalizes any intention to inform when anyone tries to force it to work. CNN is trying to defeat TEGO, something known to teachers as the time to try something else because ... Their Eyes Glaze Over. CNN takes the reverse course and tries to dazzle you with the headline but then goes to TEGO in the article.
There has been some thought here in the Rockhouse about doing a scribe about mitosis and meiosis, the processes by which cells replicate themselves at the chromosomal level. That sounds far less than sexy but these are the actual sexual processes in the combinations of chromosomes which make you. Half come from one parent and half come from the other. Mitosis and Meiosis are how that works since they're the processes which take apart the chromosomes and put them together again.
Those genetic processes are germane to the overall topic of diversity because they're the processes by which some trait in one of the stored seeds is re-introduced out in the field. Maybe the stored seed is much better at withstanding drought and that becomes more desirable in the field as the Earth warms.
Mitosis and Meiosis are the processes by which the trait of drought resistance will be introduced, at the chromosomal level, back to the world. In English that means you will plant the seed and cross-pollinate another strain of the plant from this one to get a hybrid which has a 50/50 chance of having the trait you want. That doesn't mean it's dumb luck but rather it's a 50/50 split exactly and it's because of the Laws of Mendelian Genetics.
The details about Mendel go beyond the intention which is to show the topic goes deeply technical but dressing that with buzz words won't help in making it more approachable.
What I know of this I learned from my ol' Dad talking about science on "Doorway to Knowledge" for housewives in Sydney at 11am each morning. He spoke clearly without any professorial posturing and he did not patronize by speaking down in any way. He knew people who were listening were not stupid or they would not be interesting in learning. He was exceptionally good in communicating complex things in proper English rather than scientific jargon ... plus he looked like a bearded stud on TV.
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