WBO News
by Susanne Lucas, World Bamboo Organization
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Bamboo Family Tree - Newly published research
•
10th WBC Korea Technical Committee Formed
•
New Website Design
•
World Bamboo Day 2013
•
New Honorary Council Member - Fu Jinhe
IN OTHER NEWS
AMERICAN BAMBOO SOCIETY ANNUAL MEETING
October 10 through 13, 2013:
The 2013 American Bamboo Society Annual Conference
will be held at Mounts Botanical Garden [http://www.mounts.org/] in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Simon Velez, Marcellos Villegas and other great bambuseros will be there!
Stay tuned for more info: [http://www.bamboo.org]
Bamboo Family Tree - Newly published research [http://www2.isu.edu/headlines/?p=4402]
Idaho State University researcher Kelchner helps solve 5,000-year-old mystery: team deciphers the Bamboo family tree
Source: [http://www2.isu.edu/headlines/?p=4402]
For more than 5,000 years, people have studied bamboo: its uses, growth forms, unusual flowering cycles, and its relationship to other plant groups. Until now, the relationships among the major lineages of bamboos, called "tribes," were not known with any certainty. But a new paper in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution reveals the ancient story of bamboo using DNA analysis and provides the most convincing evidence to date of their long evolutionary history.
The paper titled, "Higher level phylogenetic relationships within the bamboos (Poaceae: Bambusoideae) based on five plastid markers," is authored by Idaho State University's Scot Kelchner, associate professor of systematics and evolution in the ISU Department of Biological Sciences, and an international research team called the Bamboo Phylogeny Group [http://www.eeob.iastate.edu/research/bamboo/]
Although most Americans are relatively unfamiliar with bamboos, it is difficult to overstate their importance to the livelihood and economies of tropical nations around the world. In developing countries, bamboo stalks provide the principal building materials for homes, tools, and a myriad of useful everyday objects like baskets, fences and cooking implements. Bamboos also play a critical role in the world's endangered tropical ecosystems, particularly in mountain habitats and cloud forests where species diversity is high. Culturally, they are of central importance to the history, art and philosophy of China, India, Japan, and much of Southeast Asia.
The newly published paper represents a major contribution by ISU to the knowledge of such an important plant group, one of long-standing interest and value to many of the world's peoples.
The Bamboo Phylogeny Group (BPG) was formed in 2005 by Kelchner and his colleague professor Lynn Clark [WBO Honorary Council member] at Iowa State University to tackle persistent questions about bamboo evolution. The collaborative research venture now includes nearly 30 researchers in 12 countries.
Kelchner arrived at ISU in 2004 with a history of bamboo research and a new opportunity to finally address his questions about the evolution of these fascinating grasses. ISU has since become a major contributor to world bamboo research, despite the state having a climate so harsh that few bamboos can survive (none are native to the region). But Idaho made a suitable place to head up the data accumulation and analysis parts of the project.
Leaf material used for DNA analysis was collected by members and sent from far-flung regions of the globe including Indonesia, Brazil, India, China, and Africa. Once those tissues arrived at ISU, Kelchner and his doctoral student Amanda Fisher went to work, providing nearly half of the DNA sequences and all of the extensive computational analyses used in the study.
With careful methodology, the comparison of DNA from different species can reveal a "family tree" of relationships called a phylogeny. For bamboos, this phylogeny can be viewed as a road map to their evolutionary history. With additional data, the phylogeny can also help researchers determine when and where bamboos originated, what changes happened to bamboo bodies over time, and how bamboos could have spread across the tropical and subtropical areas of Earth.
Two critical components of the study were assisted by ISU's Molecular Research Core Facility, and Dr. Michael Thomas's EGG bioinformatics group on campus. The Core Facilty helped with DNA sequencing, and bioinformaticist Dr. Luobin Yang was essential in getting Kelchner's database for the project up and running.
Samples from Madagascar species were particularly hard to get, and the new publication is the first to include this group of bamboos in its analysis. That means the article presents the first-ever complete family tree of bamboo relationships at the tribal level.
The phylogeny contains several carefully tested surprises. New or unexpected relationships are observed that require an alteration in scientific names for many bamboo groups. A formal accompanying paper authored by the BPG does just that, creating a valid scientific reference for the new bamboo names used worldwide for these plants.
For the first time in centuries, the new classification should stabilize scientific names at higher taxonomic levels in bamboos. It was principally for this reason that the National Science Foundation funded the grant that allowed Kelchner and Clark to form the BPG and conduct the work.
This diverse group of woody grasses is native to five continents and consists of about 1,400 species. More than 40 percent of those species occur in South and Central America, a fact that tends to surprise most of us in the United States who think of bamboo as growing mainly in China and Japan.
For more information, visit the website of the Kelchner Lab at [http://www.isu.edu/~kelchner/Kelchner_Lab/Bamboo.html.]
The journal story can also be viewed at [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790313000626.]
10th WBC Korea Technical Committee Formed
WBO is proud to announce the formation of the 10th World Bamboo Congress Techical Committee. This Committee is charged with setting the scientific and technical concepts and topics for the 10th WBC, announcing the Call for Papers, reviewing and selecting the papers for oral presentation, and preparing the publishing of the WBC Proceedings. Nirmala Chongtham (India) and Jean-Luc Kouyoumji (France) will serve as CoChairs of the 10th WBC Technical Committee. The Committee is comprised of some of the most respected and progressive bamboo researchers from around the world, including Dr. Park Choong-Nyeon from Chonnam National University, South Korea, who serves on the Technical Committee on behalf of the National Organizing Committee. The first meeting of the Technical Committee with the Damyang National Organizing Committee will take place during the the Bamboo Festival in Damyang, South Korea, 3-5 May 2013. Also joining Nirmala and Jean-Luc for this initial meeting is Technical Committee member Lin Yayin (Taiwan). We look forward to this great collaboration.
The theme of the 10th WBC is "Bamboo for a Greener Future". For more information, for now you can read here: [http://worldbamboo.net/world-bamboo-congress/the-10th-world-bamboo-congress/]
The WBC website will begin to take on information to be viewed after 1 June. [http://www.worldbamboocongress.org]
Stay tuned for the Call for Papers at the end of June.
Many thanks in advance to the Techical Committee for their participation, contributions and valuable time!
New Website Design [http://www.worldbamboo.net]
If you have not yet looked, please do go see our new website:
[http://www.worldbamboo.net]
Thanks again to Watershed Media [http://www.watershedmedia.com] our friends who have made us look good for years now (Karl, I think it is 9 years!) have done it again with a fresh new re-design and easy navigation. The site is more active now, with 3 boxes on the home page which will change out featured stories. For the new launch, we have featured the news of our new corporate sponsorship with Saks Brands [http://www.sakroots.com] , [http://www.sakroots.com] the announcement of the 10th WBC Korea [http://www.worldbamboocongress.org] and the background of Technical Committee Chair Dr. Nirmala Chongtham [mailto:cnirmala10@yahoo.com].
All the information that has been posted over the years is still there, easily found, as well as links to the WBC Proceedings, PayPal link for donations and the Events page.
Take a look!
If you are interested to become a Corporate Sponsor, which gives your company logo & link high-visibility to our extensive global network, see here:
[http://worldbamboo.net/donate/]
As always, we appreciate your continued support ; thank you!
World Bamboo Day 2013 [http://www.worldbambooday.org]
OK everyone! It is time to start planning World Bamboo Day celebrations!
The week of 18 SEPTEMBER..........
What will you do? How can you help? It is a great opportunity to show the world the potentials of bamboo! Check our website [http://www.worldbambooday.org] in the coming months to see what is going on!
Send us your event announcement and we will post it on the website.
New Honorary Council Member - Fu Jinhe
Beginning in the 1990's, the early formation of WBO included collaboration with the International Network of Bamboo and Rattan [http://www.inbar.int] in our efforts to unite bamboo science, culture and exchange.
I.V. Ramanuja Rao, who is Programme Director of INBAR's Livelihood and Economic Development Programme, was instrumental in the formal organization of WBO ten years ago, and INBAR Director General Coosje Hoogendoorn has served on the Honorary Council for the past few years.
WBO is happy to announce that Dr. Fu Jinhe, Senior Program Officer of INBAR's Trade Development Programme, joins our Honorary Council. The Honorary Council [http://worldbamboo.net/about/board-of-directors/]is a group of distinguished researchers, business owners, architects, policy makers, etc who show dedication and commitment to bamboo as a vital resource. The HC acts as advisors to the administration of WBO and its goals & objectives. It is a volunteer organization, and there are no funds distributed to HC members. The WBO is funded solely through corporate sponsorships. It is a NGO with United States tax exemption status as a U.S. 501-c6 corporation.
Jinhe's face is very familiar to those of us who travel to bamboo events and tours, as he has been very active with INBAR, as well as the American Bamboo Society and European Bamboo Societies. He is staying quite busy organizing INBAR's China study tours, as well as recent projects in Ethiopia. Welcome, Jinhe!
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