AS YOU grab a handful of peanuts this festive season consider this. A decision by Washington bankers has wrecked plans to search for the ultimate peanut, reputedly hiding somewhere deep within a remote Bolivian forest. Without it, the future of the world’s most ubiquitous nut looks bleak.
Last week, the Inter-American Development Bank approved a $132-million loan for a natural gas pipeline through the Chaco forest on the border between Bolivia and Paraguay. The pipeline’s promoter is the Bolivian national gas carrier Transrede, which is controlled by Shell and US energy giant Enron.
The forest is home to many rare species, including, researchers believe, the genetic grandparent of all modern domesticated peanuts, known as the B-genome parent. Finding it “is the holy grail of peanut evolution” says David Williams of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute in Cali, Colombia.
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Over thousands of years, farmers and scientists have bred peanuts to taste good and yield bumper crops, but along the way the peanuts have lost most of their natural ability to fight pests and disease. As a result, peanuts served at parties this year will have been soaked in pesticides. Many poor farmers can barely afford to grow peanuts at all.
But, says Williams, if he can track down the ultimate peanut, he will uncover the lost genes for pest and disease resistance. They could then be added to modern peanuts via conventional breeding. The B-genome parent is one of two wild species of peanut thought to have been originally crossed to produce those that are cultivated. Each collecting expedition to the heart of the Chaco forest has produced new peanut species. That, and a climate analysis of the region, suggests 15 to 20 species have yet to be found, the ultimate peanut among them. “We think it is out there, and it is sure to be endangered. I just hope we can find it in time,” says Williams.
But those hopes now appear to have been dashed by the decision to push through the Yabog gas pipeline against the vehement opposition of indigenous fishing communities.
Chaco has been effectively off-limits to scientists for several years as the local communities fought against the building of one pipeline, completed in 1999, and the settler farmers that have followed in its wake. Fearful of exacerbating the conflict, the Bolivian government has refused to issue the permits that scientists need to remove wild peanuts for safekeeping and research. It is likely they will now be excluded for years. “We cannot expect the ban on collecting to be lifted anytime soon,” says Williams.