- Collecting beans in the American SW.
- Chilis too.
- Updated map of Neolithic expansion in Europe.
- The Microbiota Vault is a thing.
- Wind-flavoured cheese.
- But is chuño worth saving, really?
- The art of rice diversity.
- Using Jerry Maguire to explain the Plant Treaty. It is not well done. But one is surprised to see it done at all.
Plant Treaty
Luigi: That is a good stab at explaining the global value of CGIAR collections. What is missing is the enormous value of introduced crops: for most developing countries germplasm from other countries is of more value that their own germplasm. If everyone sits on their own samples, as now, (CG excepted) then everyone is damaging their own agriculture in the loger term.
The benefit-sharing part of the Treaty was badly botched. It depended on an NGO valuation of national germplasm that was fantastical, compounded by a Rome-centred attempt to diminish the value of CG genebank experience. We were regarded as technicians and firmly told we did not do policy: that was to be left to the `experts’ in Rome. With hindsight I am not even sure that the Treaty was not actually designed to be a failture, rather than just botched. If it was designed to fail, then it was done rather well: I can’t see a way out of the mess.