Yoruba twins due to yams?
Earliest use of cacao dated
Mesoamericans drank fermented cacao pulp 3000 years ago.
Latin America cooperates on (some) information
I just got the book (plus CD) containing the abstracts of the papers to be delivered here in Mexico at the 6th SIRGEALC, and there’s lots of great stuff. Unfortunately the abstracts are not online, although the programme is. That’s a pity. I’ll try to find out whether there are any plans to put them up later on. There was a lot of talk today within and among the various regional plant genetic resources networks in the Americas, which are having their annual meetings just prior to SIRGEALC at the same venue, about information systems. We still do not have a system for sharing online data on plant genetic resources accessions in genebanks. We’re trying to do something about that, but, as I concidentally found out today  from a SciDevNet story, the herbarium people are way ahead of us.
Dryland, Livestock/Wildlife Environment Interface Project
Fatter livestock, more wild animals, honey. The elusive win-win-win?
A genebank opens
Tunisia just got a new genebank. Which is fine. But it will come as a surprise to many to see it described as “the first African as well Arab Gene’s Bank.” It is certainly not the first genebank in Africa, nor the first in the Arab world. It isn’t even the first one in Arab Africa. I don’t think it’s the first one in Tunisia, in fact. FAO has information on about 1,400 genebanks around the world. It would be very difficult, I think, for a new genebank to be the first one anywhere. Ok, maybe Antartctica. Although actually I heard today in the SIRGEALC corridors that Argentina keeps a safety duplicate of its material on its territory there. I really need to verify that. The Arctic, of course, is taken. Or it will be on 24 February 2008 when the Svalbard Global Seed Vault opens. Fourteen hundred genebanks. My question is: with the International Treaty on PGRFA and its Multilateral System of facilitated access and benefit sharing now in force, at least for some crops, how many genebanks do we really, truly need?