Month: June 2011

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Educate girls, plant a school garden, promote biodiversity

What’s not to like?

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This post is simply an abuse of authorial rights to promote a project. I just received the second project report from Educate 1300 Girls By Restoring A Marrakech Garden, which I am supporting via Global Giving. Why that project? Because it is relevant to me in all sorts of ways. Maybe to you too; they still need to raise about $15,000.

During the past academic year, thirty students conducted their own field research by interviewing Marrakechi herbalists about important cultural recipes. [The Global Diversity Foundation] is now organizing a database of the girls’ findings, titled, “An Ethnobotanical Study of Five Traditional Women’s Recipes.” In the autumn of this year, the girls will be able to re-examine, analyze, and discuss their own data. We hope that this will be the first of many such educational initiatives at Lalla Aouda Saadia.

I look forward to the next report, which I hope will tell me more about those traditional recipes, and to the garden’s continued growth.

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Nibbles: Qat, Neolithic, Indian nutrition, Indian fish resources, San Diego zoo genebank, Oats, food Security

  • Tax qat? Rather you than me, dude.
  • ” …non-domesticated animals and plants may give hints on the direction and timing of early human expansion routes.”
  • ” The question is why hunger is prevalent when the nature has blessed India with 20 agro-ecological regions and 60 sub-regions to produce the widest variety of food grains, fruits and vegetables in the world?” And it’s a good question.
  • “We have sent a report regarding the occurrence of exotic fishes in such a huge quantity to the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources (NBFGR), Lucknow.” In other news, India has a National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources.
  • San Diego Zoo works to conserve Africa apes. Fine. But did you know it has a Native Seed Gene Bank?
  • Swedes and oats; recipe for cold-tolerant varieties.
  • Empowering Farmers to Achieve Food Security. The Head of Food Security at Syngenta International explains how.
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Saving rice varieties in India

In view of the failure of all ex situ rice seed banks to protect the erosion of rice genetic diversity, CIS [Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies] established Vrihi (Sanskrit name of “rice”), the first non-governmental rice seed bank for farmers, in 1997. Coordinated by its founder Debal Deb, Vrihi Beej Binimoy Kendra is the largest non-governmental rice seed exchange centre in eastern India, established not only to promote cultivation of folk rice varieties, but also re-establish the vanishing culture of seed exchange.
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CIS gratefully acknowledges the funding support it received from RFSTE for Vrihi’s activities till March 2000. Since then, Vrihi has been running on its founder’s personal funding support and donations from friends, especially Dr. Paoloroberto Imperiali of Rome. His donation was instrumental in establishing a research farm, Basudha, where regular, in situ cultivation of all folk rice varieties began in 2001.

Very worthy, but unfortunately not all seems to be well. Vrihi Beej Binimoy Kendra moved this May, from Beliatore to Panchal. And now the farm operation has moved too, from Basudha to Kerandiguda in Odisha.

In 2010 we were able to save all the 686 varieties on Bhairab Saini’s farm, some 5 km away from Basudha. Bhairab sacrificed his farm plot for Basudha’s conservation work for the year, but we cannot take advantage of his generosity every year; besides, we must find a sustainable solution to conserve the nation’s wealth of vanishing rice varieties in situ… We have transferred all the rice seeds from Basudha’s accession to this new farm in Kerandiguda, and started sowing the seeds from the 16th June 2011, with the help of local villagers, and Living Farms, a local NGO. The sowing was finished on the 21st June.

Good luck to them, of course. But I can’t help thinking that “a sustainable solution to conserve the nation’s wealth of vanishing rice varieties” should include placing these 686 varieties in the genebanks at NBPGR and IRRI, pace the “failure of all ex situ rice seed banks to protect the erosion of rice genetic diversity.”And not necessarily growing all of them out every year at CIS’s farm, given some basic seed storage technology. But I don’t know enough about the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies and it’s seed saving operation. Maybe our Indian readers can tell us more.