Author: Luigi Guarino

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Quality management in genebanks

You may remember a nibble a few weeks back about CIP’s ISO accreditation for its germplasm acquisition, management and distribution operations. The press release stated that:

This is the first time that a genebank has gained accreditation anywhere in the world.

I was a bit skeptical about this initially, as I knew that some European genebanks had also put in place a formal quality management system. But, on reading about the subject on the website of the Dutch genebank, it seems that what they have achieved is certification, which I have a feeling is quite different to accreditation. Maybe some expert out there will put me out of my misery.

Anyway, I was reminded of all this by a paper just out in Theriogenology which looks at managing the quality of the 127,479 samples in the US swine germplasm collection at Ft Collins.

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Italian silk-making

We’ve blogged several times about silk-making in Africa, but this is somewhat closer (at least physically) to home (at least for now). Smithsonian Magazine has a short article on sericulture which includes a reference to a museum devoted to the subject in Como. Turns out that northern Italian city used to be a hub of silk-making. Who knew.

Incidentally, we’ve also blogged about butterfly farming before. And there’s a post just out at mongbay on what they’re doing at the Iwokrama reserve in Guyana. But an article in The Independent describes something altogether more grandiose: “the world’s biggest ‘walkthrough butterfly experience.'”

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Nibbles: Sunflowers, Cherries, Red jungle fowl, Sheep, Russia, Kenya, GFU on NUS