A rapid round-up of some things that caught my eye.
A paper in Crop Science explores the Spanish national genebank’s collection of beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) in search of diversity. They find it, plus evidence of two New World genepools and some intermediate forms.
Banana farmers in The Philippines have reported good results from a programme on Enhancing Smallholder Banana Production. There are many components to the programme — which has boosted exports to valuable markets in Japan and Korea. Among them, the use of clean planting material produced by tissue culture, a focus on appropriate varieties, and careful management of fertilizer regimes. Incomes are said to have gone up 25%.
Cary Fowler is described by The Guardian as “one of the driving forces behind an international seed bank on the Arctic island of Svalbard”. And more besides, we would add. Anyway, he told a TedGlobal audience in Oxford, England, about the threat to agrobiodiversity.
His namesake apple, the Fowler apple, is still cultivated. Pulling out a book from 1904 of apples grown in the state of New York, the Fowler apple is described as a beautiful fruit, but it is also noted that “it fails to develop in size and quality and is on a whole unsatisfactory.”