Nibbles: Fast cowpea, Conference, Rice, Schools

Anastasia reports on the Biofortification conference: 60-day cowpeas
Big blog post on even bigger conference on molecular tools for improving vegetatively-propagated crops: banana, plantain and cassava.
Rice technologists! You need to read this blog post by Prabhu Pingali.
UK’s Royal Horticultural Society report says school gardens are “vital”.

2 Replies to “Nibbles: Fast cowpea, Conference, Rice, Schools”

Isn’t the cowpea story cool? I’m glad I got to meet Dr. Singh. Here’s hoping he’s successful in his mission to integrate them into grain rotations.

Jeremy says:

November 10, 2010 at 3:37 pm

It is. Here’s hoping he also manages to develop short-day versions to suit the many different growing conditions where people depend on cowpea.

Reply

A paean to diverse diets is just what we all need.
And another one, from the MIT Technology Review of all places.
Menawhile, there’s only one reference to dietary diversity in the World Bank’s investment framework for nutrition.
Maybe you have to quantify that diversity before you can save it? Now where have I heard that before?
Meanwhile, Europe reports on biodiversity-friendly farming practices. Does that include the biodiversity of the actual crops? Perhaps surprisingly, yes!
You want biodiversity-friendly farming practices? Talk to Indigenous people. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has launched an e-consultation on “Preserving, strengthening and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and traditional practices for sustainable food systems.”
There’s diversity in asparagus too.
Genebanks can help with those biodiversity-friendly practices, diverse diets and rops and Indigenous practices.
Even big international genebanks.
Even the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
But some are in trouble.
Though others are coming back.