- If you’re going to grown switchgrass as a biofuel, grow it in variety mixtures.
- The two wild parents of the cultivated peanut get sequenced.
- As also does common bean from its Mesoamerican genepool. Happy International Year of Pulses.
- New wild Aussie tomato gets a cool name. No word on when it will be sequenced. Or how long it will last.
- Speaking of climate change in Australia, wine might be in trouble.
- And more from Down Under: new book on indigenous Australian foods. Some of which may have been cultivated.
- Lots of herbarium specimens have the wrong name. Well I never.
- CIMMYT and ICARDA collaborate on wheat diversity.
- Roman wine rising again from the ashes of Pompeii.
- Exhibition on Colombia’s food plants.
- Portuguese green broth is no doubt very nice, but definitely needs a new name.
- The ancient urban gardens of Istanbul live on.
- Kenya gets on top of using biodiversity for climate change adaptation. Or on top of developing a strategy for doing so, anyway.
- Ola Westengen has a strategy, but you have to speak Norwegian to hear about it.
- Hybrid wheat is 5 years away. How long have they been saying that?
- The latest Rice Today has an article on genebank tourism by Mike Jackson (p. 39), who should know.
- Iowa State University is offering $900 to eat 3 orange bananas.
- Sahaju: saving agricultural biodiversity in India the organic way. Cheaper than $900 too.
- Want to multiply up coconuts really fast? They know how to do it in the Philippines.
3 orange bananas:
The link states: “Critics of the GMO banana also claim that the engineered fruit constitutes a case of “biopiracy”—that is, the genes from this particular banana were sourced from a cultivar from Papua New Guinea, and the people who have developed the cultivar “have neither consented to its use in the GMO nor do they receive any benefit,” according to The Ecologist.”
There is no question of biopiracy: PNG has ratified the Treaty; Musa is an Annex 1 crop. The Ecologist should be aware in repeating false information that `biopiracy’ advocates have almost stopped the global movement of genetic resources from developing countries. This is a catastrophe that shows no signs of a solution.
Dave:
Simply being an Annex 1 crop in a country which has ratified the Treaty doesn’t automatically obviate the question of piracy does it? I may be wrong, but I was of the impression that if there is some IP claim on a particular germplasm then it’s own IP would supersede the Annex 1 listing.
Now I don’t know the particulars in this banana story – you may very well be correct that the fruit in question has not been pirated. And if not then I agree with your stance. But if there is some condition for which Annex 1 listing is secondary…
Clem: I think it was collected before the CBD came into effect. Unless PNG had at that time specific laws against plant collection (unlikely) then the sample was not illegal. It would have become illegal if collected post CBD unless the rules had been followed on access and benefit-sharing. Post Plant Treaty there would have been an SMTA that allowed IP on derivatives (presumably the gene for redness in the banana) subject to a tax payable to FAO. But in any case the IP would have to stop free use by others of the product – probably not the intention of the project. Also any IP would not restrict free access to the original sample – which has always been the case, thus protecting continued free access to samples of Annex I crops and species. Whew!