- ICRISAT: “The impact of climate change on the yields under low input agriculture is likely to be minimal as other factors will continue to provide the overriding constraints to crop growth and yield.” So that’s all right then.
- Book and CD-ROM on African indigenous veggies.
- CD-ROM of wood characteristics.
- The agrobiodiversity of “…the oldest and largest area of detached town gardens in Britain” being surveyed. Cultivated since 1605. Wow.
- Earthworm Week! Yay!
- “This is an exciting time for salmon conservation in the Pahsimeroi.”
- Hawaiian native bees in trouble. Get in line.
- The world has a malaria map. Very cool.
- The Canary Islands tries to save its potatoes, sweet and otherwise.
- The Forgotten Fruits Summit. You heard me.
Food Security online
The first issue of the journal Food Security is online, with a foreword from Norman Borlaug, whose 95th birthday it is today. The papers appear to be free to download.
The Bioscience Behind Secure Harvests ignores conservation
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) invests £78m (€80m) in plant and crop research at universities and institutes across the UK, sometimes in the form of international partnerships. They have a pamphlet out called The Bioscience Behind Secure Harvests, highlighting “key BBSRC-supported research into achieving global food security.” There’s a lot on breeding, in particular as a way of adapting to climate change, and a section on “Harnessing natural diversity.” 1 There are even a couple of — albeit brief — references to the use of wild relatives in wheat breeding. But nothing at all on the conservation side of things. I guess the BBSRC figures that funding the long-term availability of the raw materials of all this breeding it is supporting is someone else’s problem.
Revising the US Plant Hardiness Zone Map
“All gardeners are in zone denial.”
The zones in question are the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Plant Hardiness Zones, which show where different garden species are supposed to do well. Gardeners, of course, think they know better, and will always try to push that envelope.
Anyway, the current version of the Plant Hardiness Zone Map was done way back in 1990, and needed updating. So there’s a new one coming soon. It’s bound to be different, in places very different. A whole new set of recommendations for gardeners to go into denial about.
USDA is not describing what the new map will show, but outside experts say that the trend is for zones to shift northward. “Some places have definitely warmed, although others haven’t changed at all,” says Tony Avent, owner of North Carolina-based Plant Delights Nursery and an advisor for the revision.
You can’t do much with the current map online, but the next version will be downloadable to your GIS. It will also be more sophisticated, with better data, better interpolation and better resolution (800m):
The revised map draws on 30 years of data and uses a complex algorithm to factor in other variables that affect local temperatures, such as altitude and the presence of water bodies.
Will some of the USDA’s clonal repositories (field genebanks) find themselves in the wrong zone?
Featured: ABS policies
Cary Fowler suggests a novel approach to developing policies for access and benefit sharing:
Rather than start with the policies we may instinctively love and want, this pedigree shows us that we should begin with what we want to achieve, such as flood-tolerant rice, work backwards from there, and ask ourselves what policies will be needed to achieve such this rice, or UG99-resistant wheat, or low-toxin lathyrus, or…