A segment produced by the National Science Foundation in the US. Which means that by “corn” they mean “maize”.
Warning: May be too groovy for those of a nervous or academic disposition
Zimbabwe revisited; please reward GardenAfrica
A couple of weeks ago I moaned that the description for a project to Support Zimbabwean smallholders to feed their communities and conserve their natural heritage had “failed to set my heart aflutter”. A little wordly magic has now been wrought on the proposal, which I now honestly believe gives a better picture of what the project is setting out to do. The very least you can now do is to reinforce GardenAfrica’s behaviour by heading over to the Coop site and voting for this proposal in the Tackling Global Poverty category.
Thanks.
How do you manage knowledge?
If I want to find which wheat line carries Ug99 rust resistance, I don’t go to a genebank database, nor even Theoretical and Applied Genetics TAG on the shelf behind me and where I saw the relevant article. I Google the phrase.
Pat Helsop-Harrison tells it like it is in the Annals of Botany blog. He’s previewing a virtual conference next week that questions how scientists and others share and manage information. Wouldn’t you know it, I’m probably too snowed under producing information myself to pay much attention, but I will be looking for summaries. There are now so many more different kinds of information, and so many different ways of finding things than there were before, that we need new approaches.
Berry go Round carnival has come around again
Berry go Round, the blog carnival about plants, has emerged from winter with a cracking display of lovely stuff. Rather than fillet out the agrobiodiversity stuff — hazels, lettuce, wild foods — I’ll leave you to explore the links and follow your own instincts.
Nibbles: Tomatoes, African rice, Entebbe, Coconuts, Wild relatives, Economic botany
- “On the contrary, ‘doesn’t come true from seed’ is another way of saying ‘has lots of exciting diversity’.” Rebsie rounds up her tomatoes.
- Domestication of African rice explored at the Vaviblog.
- Entebbe Botanical Gardens has a genebank. That’s all I know.
- Roland continues to dream of a South Sea genebank paradise; one island, one coconut variety.
- “Cary Fowler explains the vital importance of crop wild relatives to address the future challenges to agriculture,” it says at the Trust website.
- Let them eat bread. Foreign Affairs on food riots. h/t Rachel, who has some interesting things to say on the subject.
- Fascinating behind the scenes insights into Economic Botany collections at Kew and elsewhere.