Month: August 2011

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An Indian Svalbard in the Himalayas

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) signed Memorandum of Agreement for conservation of plant genetic resources in the National Permafrost Repository at Chang-La, Leh, Ladakh (J&K).

So India now has its very own seed vault in the permafrost. The above is from an ICAR press release from a couple of days ago. But The Hindu reported on the Permafrost Repository as long ago as early last year. This photograph is from that article, so things may have changed since then.

It’s not altogether clear to me why India would wish to do this, when it can send safety duplicates of its material to Svalbard for free and under black box conditions, but anyway.

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Mapping potato genetic resources

And speaking of genetic erosion:

Land use tendencies between 1997 and 2005 shows that the total cropping area dedicated to improved cultivars has grown fast while the area reserved for native-floury and native-bitter landrace has remained more or less stable. Reduced fallow periods for existing fields and the gradual incorporating of high-altitude virgin pasture lands sustain areal growth. While areas of improved cultivars are proportionally growing fastest at extremely high altitudes between 3,900 and 4,350 m of altitude, overall cropping intensity or fallowing rates are inversely related to altitude. No evidence of a straightforward replacement of one cultivar category by another was found.

That’s from the winners of the third prize at the SCGIS/ESRI/SCB International Conservation Mapping Contest, Traditional Cartography section: CIP’s Henry Saul Juarez Soto, with Franklin Plasencia and Stef de Haan. Worth reading the whole thing.

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Pangusa njaa haraka

“We tell farmers that diversifying to more drought resistant crops is key to cope with the changing climate,” Leakey says. To encourage them, she offers a “Leldet Bouquet”: Instead of 2kg maize seeds costing 300 Kenyan shillings ($3), the farmer can get a mix of five seed packets with an equivalent weight of cowpeas, sorghum, beans, pigeon pea, millet and maize. The mix of crops in the “bouquet” is adapted to the farmer’s location.

That’s from an AlterNet story from a few days ago, but we blogged about the Leldet seed company back in June. Now, how cool would it be to get some genebank samples into those Leldet Bouquets? Or maybe even the mother-in-law’s maize…