Jeremy blogged sometime back about the lack of variety-level nutritional data out there. And more recently we’ve had an exchange of comments on the limited extent to which potato germplasm collections have been screened for micronutrients. One reason is probably the fact that nutritional composition is difficult to measure. Well, today comes news from USDA of a rapid method of analysis that could spur the evaluation of agrobiodiversity — and breeding — for nutritional value. Some 100 wild and cultivated accessions have had their phytochemical profiles quantified by high-throughput liquid chromatography and mass spectroscopy. Apparently, it only takes 12 minuts per sample. As an example of the results, levels of folic acid varied as much as three-fold among 70 entries, and flavonoid levels 30-fold.
Traditional rice cultivation at risk
Saving the Ifugao rice terraces, and their agrobiodiversity.
Prof. Jack Hawkes
Prof. Jack Hawkes, a pioneer and a giant of the science — and practice — of plant genetic resources conservation and use, is dead at 92.
International Kitchen Garden Day
Did you know there’s an International Kitchen Garden Day on the fourth Sunday of August each year? Neither did I, but it’s a good way of celebrating agrobiodiversity, isn’t it? Anyway, I got to hear about it via a wiki on Sustainable Community Action that Danny has just blogged about over at Rurality.
Access and benefit sharing discussed… again
All too often it seems as if the “debate” on access to genetic resources (and the sharing of the benefits derived from access and use ((Together known as “access and benefit sharing,” or ABS.)) mostly consists of people talking past each other. Today we have, from the animal genetic resources conference at Interlaken, a statement to the effect that the talking is coming at the expense of urgent action on conservation. Meanwhile, we have more talking from an international workshop in Beijing on genetic resources and indigenous knowledge, ((Held in Beijing on 4 September, but I can’t find further information about it on the CBD website, or anywhere else for that matter! Maybe someone out there can educate me?)) where Gurdial Singh Nijar, a law professor at the University of Malaya in Malaysia, said that:
Developing countries are losing out because their laws do not specify which resources should be paid for and how… This is due to the lack of a legal definition of what constitutes payable genetic resources, and clarity on who owns these resources: national governments or local communities of origin.