Enlarge picture The diversity of coconut trees like these planted along the seashore in the northern Philippines is in danger, but a French scientist has a plan.
The diversity of coconut trees like these planted along the beach in the northern Philippines is in danger, but a French scientist has a strategy.
French adventurer-scientist Roland Bourdeix has a grand, practically surreal, vision for how to preserve a thousand or far more genetic varieties of coconut trees. Imagine, as he does, turning dozens or hundreds of remote Pacific islands into coconut sanctuaries. Just about every island would consist of just a number of types of these trees. No other people would be allowed, simply because the entire stage of this workout is to stop uncontrolled mixing of genes from diverse types.
But why? Are coconut trees, the supply of oil and newly fashionable coconut water, by some means in danger?
Not precisely. At least not for now. There are lots of coconut palms all in excess of the tropics, and coconut manufacturing has been little by little increasing.
But that masks a prospective long - phrase dilemma, says Stephan Weise, Deputy Director General for Exploration at Bioversity International in Rome. Most coconut manufacturing comes from a little slice of the coconut's gene pool. Producers rely on a handful of substantial - producing varieties or hybrids.
People industrial types are gradually mind-boggling regular varieties that individuals in the tropics have tended for thousands of many years. Individuals classic strains of coconut are the storehouse of the coconut's genetic diversity: All of the colors, shapes, tastes, and survival resources that this species possesses and may need to have again someday.
Conserving such diversity in agricultural crops is a familiar issue. Regardless of whether it really is rice or cucumbers, farmers all around the planet have been changing traditional "landraces" with a tiny number of high -yielding varieties produced by plant breeders.
But the situation with coconuts has an more twist, Weise says.
Initial of all, scientists can not however protect a specific line of coconuts in refrigerated "gene banks," as they do with normal seeds. They cannot dry, freeze, and preserve coconuts for many years, as they can with corn kernels. As an alternative, coconuts have to be preserved as living trees, increasing outside.
This prospects to the second dilemma. Coconut varieties expanding in the open air typically will not reproduce themselves reliably. Their flowers select up pollen from other trees close by, which frequently turn out to be commercial varieties or hybrids. And when that comes about, their genetic identity is "diluted." Their offspring will not contain their distinct combination of genes. Some genes could be misplaced altogether.
So what's the secret to preserving these heirloom coconuts? For starters, researchers have set up a dozen open-air coconut gene banking institutions. They're reproducing just about every assortment through cautious hand-pollination of the trees. But Weise says that is expensive and labor-intensive, especially when trees get tall, with flowers beyond the reach of ladders. ( There is also the threat of illness a coconut collection in Papua New Guinea is underneath quarantine appropriate now due to the fact of an outbreak of disease nearby.)
Which brings us back to Roland Bourdeix's crazy -sounding thought. Bourdeix is a scientist at CIRAD, a French investigation institute on agricultural improvement, and he's one particular of the world's major experts on coconuts. The important to preserving coconut biodiversity much more cheaply, he thinks, is isolation. And there is no additional isolated spot than a lonely Pacific island. Just convince people today on 1 of these islands to plant coconut trees from a single wide variety (or a handful of distinctly different varieties ), and the issue, at least for that modest corner of the coconut's gene pool, is pretty much solved.
So Bourdeix is now scouting the Pacific for such islands. He's uncovered a number of in which the inhabitants are prepared to enable turn his vision into reality. One particular of them is properly - identified previously : The Tetiaroa Atoll in French Polynesia, an idyllic retreat once owned by Marlon Brando.
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