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Nechama Brodie is a South African journalist and researcher. She is the author of six books, including two critically acclaimed urban histories of Johannesburg and Cape Town. She works as the head of training and research at TRI Facts, part of independent fact-checking organisation Africa Check, and is completing a PhD in data methodology and media studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.
How Barcoding Pollen Might Save Plants And Bees
South African biotechnologists and geneticists have launched a brilliant programme that will help them track some of the tiniest, and most important, actors in the food production chain: insect pollinators. And all this will be done by 'barcoding' fragments of pollen DNA, which will enable researchers to better identify which pollinators pollinate which plants.
This article, published on The Conversation, gives a lovely overview of what the programme involves, discusses advances in plant and pollen 'metabarcoding', explains why the relationship between plants and pollinators is more complicated than might be thought, and discusses why the barcode approach could unlock many current unknowns.
All of this work, in turn, could have important implications for the preservation of pollination processes and pollinators that are essential to food production (agricultural and otherwise). And for the long-term sustainability of the natural environment not just in the biological diversity hotspot of South Africa but ultimately in other regions of the world.
