Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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Up is the new down

Further to Luigi’s trend-setting (and spotting) piece positing that an economic downturn could mean an upturn for agricultural biodiversity, I note from our friend Danny Hunter’s blog that LEISA is asking its local partners a couple of germane questions:

What are the effects of the global economic crisis that you see in your own environment, at the level of target groups (e.g. food prices, changes in agriculture, availability of credit, etc…)?

Does it affect the functioning of your own organisations or networks? How?

Answers are coming in, and LEISA is continuing the discussion on an open forum. Anyone care to fillet the answers for agrobiodiversity-specific information?

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Featured: Assisted living

Vernon Heywood on Assisting crop wild relatives:

Moving species into new environments is … a contentious issue and may involve considerable risks. It is a complex issue involving not just scientific, technical and economic but sociological and ethical considerations. It requires a sound and well thought out policy framework before it is widely undertaken as a management response to global change but might be prove to be appropriate in a number of high priority species such as CWR of major crops.

Who else is doing the thinking? And where?

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Featured: Genebanks

Carla Barber, from Canada’s National Research Council Plant Biotechnology Institute, offers a glimpse of the genebank database that will be launched in about a month:

The seed database … supports searching of various scientific data associated with each seed line such as Agronomic, Biochemical, Phenotypic, Genetic, Proteomic, Structural, Publications, as well as the option to integrate more Data Categories in the future.

Do you believe in Heaven?

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Nibbles: Space, Grape shapes, Genetic diversity, Diseases, Bamboo, Geographic indications, Cacao