The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) has just kicked off a Kenya Arid and Semi-Arid Lands Research Programme (KASAL) with funding from the European Union. Assistant Minister for Science and Technology, Mr Hassan Sasura, said at the launch that “the fragile pastoralist economies required product diversification and value addition to root out poverty and marginalisation.” That seems to give at least some hope that the programme will pay due attention to the importance of agricultural biodiversity. Let’s hope so.
Chilean salmon farming
WWF recommends how salmon farming and beautiful Chilean lakes can co-exist.
Croatian agricultural biodiversity
Conference on Croatian breeds and varieties, in Croatian though.
Kapok disjunction
Documenting Amazonian crop diversity
CODESU is the Consortium for Sustainable Development in Ucayali – an Amazonian department of Peru, with Pucallpa as its administrative centre. The consortium partners really recognize the importance of agricultural biodiversity in their development efforts – perhaps an unusual situation. The latest evidence of this committment is the germplasm catalog that has just gone online. It has information on cassava, peppers, beans and maize. There are other interesting resources on the website, including publications, though mainly in Spanish. You can read more about the efforts of CODESU in the management of crop diversity in traditional agroecosystems, and place them in a wider context, in a recent Bioversity International publication of that title.