Following my putting up his video of surfing in the Solomons — with ancillary shots of agrobiodiversity — Tony Jansen has pointed out to me that Seed Savers actually have a video on YouTube that is all about agricultural biodiversity. Here it is.
Ethan Zuckerman puts the e- in e-agriculture
Ethan Zuckerman is a well-respected internet guru. He’s got a blog, called My Heart’s in Accra, on which he muses “on Africa, international development and hacking the media.” He was recently at the Web2forDev conference here in Rome, the centrepiece of e-Agriculture week, where he
participated in a very strange panel on eAgriculture, where the main topic of conversation seemed to be the fact that none of the panelists quite knew what eAgriculture was or should be.
That’s from a blog entry with a definite agrobiodiversity vibe, talking as it does about recent innovative solutions to the problem of providing up-to-date price information on commodities to Ethiopian farmers, for example via SMS. Thanks to Kevin for the tip.
The ITPGRFA Governing Body meets
The Second Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is on all week at FAO, Rome. Good opportunity to meet up with old friends. Follow the goings on daily at Earth Negotiations Bulletin.
To cull or not to cull
Apparently the argument about whether it’s a good idea or not to cull badgers in areas of bovine TB incidence in the UK is not over yet. Now a farmer weighs in. Well whatever next!
Parasites push promiscuity
Many hermaphrodite plants (and some animals) — including many crops — have what is called a mixed mating reproductive strategy. That means they reproduce by both self- and cross-fertilization, with important consequences for the amount and structure of their genetic variation. The prevalence of mixed mating systems is surprising because inbreeding depression should work to get rid of self-fertilization, resulting in “pure strategies of either outcrossing or selfing.” Now a new study suggests that its natural enemies — pests, parasites, herbivores, etc. — may have a strong effect on the evolution of a plant’s mating systems:
For example, enemies may alter the availability of mates in a population, which may have direct consequences for victim mating system evolution. Enemies may also influence the expression of traits that are important for mating system evolution, thereby improving the evolutionary stability of mixed mating as a reproductive system.
Thus the dynamics of the interactions between a species and the biodiversity that surrounds it can counter the effects of inbreeding depression and lead to the stability of an otherwise doomed evolutionary strategy. I wonder how important this has been in the evolution of agrobiodiversity. After all, concentrating plants in dense near-monocultures like agriculture does is a boon to natural enemies.