- Potato fest at the Vavilov Institute next week. Report for us!
- Gary Nabhan on tortillas made of “mesquite pods, the flour of ground, popped amaranth seeds, wheat flour and olive oil.”
- EU to fund promotion of agricultural products, including information campaigns on the EU system of PDO, PGI, TSG, QWPSR et al. Via.
- Diversity good even within individuals.
- Engaging children in Sahelian agriculture and agrobiodiversity.
Featured: Climate change
Andy Jarvis gets real on climate change:
Why always assume that climate change goes in the direction of negative change? … More degree days will surely shorten fruiting time, giving you production earlier. Greater extremes between maximum and minimum temperatures in the day might give you sweeter fruit. And less risk of frost early in the season during flowering could increase production. I fear we’re predisposed to always see things negatively.
Indeed we are.
Nibbles: Climate change, Rice, Maize, PGR, Bananas
- Dept. of Silver Linings: “U.S. farmers and foresters could earn more money from carbon contracts than they pay in higher costs from legislation to control greenhouse gases.”
- Dept. of Black Clouds: “Climate change and the risk of violent conflict in the Middle East.”
- Rapid-growing rice reduces famine in Bangladesh.
- Yields of maize grown in rotation are higher and more stable than those grown exclusively.
- Latest Plant Genetic Resources newsletter online. Most accessible here.
- Banana scientist bags award for field genebank.
Climate change and fruit
A long report in the LA Times reminds readers that climate change is not all about droughts and floods. It’s also about winter chill. Many fruit trees absolutely must have a certain number of cold days in the winter to prepare them for spring blossom and summer fruit. Those chill days are declining fast in California’s Central Valley.
“Climate change is not just about sea-level rise and polar bears,” said UC Davis researcher Eike Luedeling, lead author of the study. “It is about our food security. Climate change may make conditions less favorable to grow the crops we need to feed ourselves.”
Can’t argue with that. But are California’s fruit farmers likely to experiment, as the farmers of Kazakhstan have done, with planting different varieties, maybe even seedlings, to see whether any of these are better able to produce under different conditions? Somehow, I doubt it.
HT: The Ethicurean.
More than a nibble, less than a meal
A rapid round-up of some things that caught my eye.
A paper in Crop Science explores the Spanish national genebank’s collection of beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) in search of diversity. They find it, plus evidence of two New World genepools and some intermediate forms.
Banana farmers in The Philippines have reported good results from a programme on Enhancing Smallholder Banana Production. There are many components to the programme — which has boosted exports to valuable markets in Japan and Korea. Among them, the use of clean planting material produced by tissue culture, a focus on appropriate varieties, and careful management of fertilizer regimes. Incomes are said to have gone up 25%.
Cary Fowler is described by The Guardian as “one of the driving forces behind an international seed bank on the Arctic island of Svalbard”. And more besides, we would add. Anyway, he told a TedGlobal audience in Oxford, England, about the threat to agrobiodiversity.
His namesake apple, the Fowler apple, is still cultivated. Pulling out a book from 1904 of apples grown in the state of New York, the Fowler apple is described as a beautiful fruit, but it is also noted that “it fails to develop in size and quality and is on a whole unsatisfactory.”