- The Resilient Seed Systems Shared Action Framework is out.
- 15 rice varieties are protected through Geographic Indication in India.
- Kids’ book about native seeds.
- Hacking the arms race between crops and pathogens.
- Domestication entailed a change in adaptation from megafauna to people as dispersal agents. Here’s the correct link to the study.
- Weed of rice became more rice-like due to hand weeding.
- Maize is being abandoned in its heartland. And yet there are calls for a milpa in every home.
Brainfood: Cropland map, Wild spinach collecting, CC double, Cacao diversity, Oilpalm footprint, Algal genebanks, Potatoes & gas, S African livestock, Silk Road cereals, Pests & CC
- Global synergy cropland map. Yes, another one.
- Acquisition and regeneration of Spinacia turkestanica Iljin and S. tetrandra Steven ex M. Bieb. to improve a spinach gene bank collection. CGN plugs some gaps.
- Recent responses to climate change reveal the drivers of species extinction and survival. Niche shifts more important than dispersal in avoiding extinction.
- Climate change responses benefit from a global food system approach. Well I never.
- Morphological characterisation and evaluation of cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) in Trinidad to facilitate utilisation of Trinitario cacao globally. Some combine large seeds with high seed numbers.
- The environmental impacts of palm oil and its alternatives. Not as bad as you may think.
- Macroalgal germplasm banking for conservation, food security, and industry. Liquid cultures in dormancy is the way to do it, apparently.
- Simple Sequence Repeat-Based Genetic Diversity and Analysis of Molecular Variance among on-Farm Native Potato Landraces from the Influence Zone of Camisea Gas Project, Northern Ayacucho, Peru. So what will be done about it?
- Livelihood, Food and Nutrition Security in Southern Africa: What Role Do Indigenous Cattle Genetic Resources Play? A big role which in in danger and could in fact be bigger.
- 5,200-year-old cereal grains from the eastern Altai Mountains redate the trans-Eurasian crop exchange. Wheat and barley in the Altai one thousand years before we thought.
- Complex responses of global insect pests to climate warming. 41% of 31 globally important phytophagous insect pests will increase in severity, jury out on what will happen with the others.
AfricaRice’s new genebank opens for business
With all that’s been going on in Svalbard, I neglected to note that Africa Rice has just inaugurated its new genebank, the Rice Biodiversity Center for Africa, in Bouaké, Côte d’Ivoire. Here’s the press release. And here’s a Q&A from a few years back with the genebank manager, Dr Marie-Noëlle Ndjiondjop. This piece from the Genebank Platform gives the background: it’s a sad story with a happy ending, do read it. There’s more information on the genebank on the Platform website. And of course there’s an overview of its holdings in Genesys.
Looking past 2020
The CBD’s Open-Ended Working Group on the post-2020 biodiversity framework (i.e., what happens after the Aichi Targets) has been meeting this week in Rome to discuss what they call their “Zero Draft.” You can read that on the CBD website, along with its appendix on how to monitor progress (i.e. goals and indicators). As ever, IISD does a great job of summarizing the sessions, and the corridor talk.
Why is this important to agriculture? Well, because in 2018 the fourteenth meeting of its Conference of Parties in Sharm el-Sheikh said that the work of the CBD after 2020 needed to be as inclusive and global as possible. That means the framework had to address the particular concerns of all the different sectors, including agriculture.
Yeah, but why is that even a thing? Surely conservation of agricultural biodiversity is just the same as conservation of other biodiversity. Actually, not so much. And if you want a very concise explanation of the difference, and a nice summary of the state of the negotiations to boot, you could do a lot worse than watch this interview with Kent Nnadozie, Secretary of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. It’s on the CBD’s Facebook page, so I’m not entirely sure if everyone will be able — or willing — to see it. If that includes you, let me know and I’ll see if I can think of a way around it. 1.
Spoiler alert: it’s the use.
Final word on One CGIAR viewpoints
Ok, let’s recap. Food Policy put out a sort of special issue, or rather special section of its latest issue, entitled On Research Strategy for the new ‘One CGIAR’. It consists of an editorial plus 5 “viewpoint” papers. They’re all behind paywalls. I first just saw the one by Dr David Lobell, and wrote a bit about it here. Then I saw the ones by Drs Rebecca Nelson and Lawrence Haddad, and wrote about them.
It was then that I finally twigged to the scale of the thing, and saw the two remaining pieces. Actually it was thanks to a Twitter exchange, but maybe that’s another story. One of the viewpoints I missed is by Dr Pedro Sanchez, who basically says that CGIAR should focus more on nutrient-rich foods, both plant- and animal-based, which is congruent with the others in highlighting the importance of agricultural biodiversity without actually mentioning it, let alone genebanks. The second is by a group of 6 Cornell researchers, and they summarize their recommendations as follows, and I quote:
- One CGIAR must cooperate and collaborate with multiple international partners.
- One CGIAR must build regional capacity and training in cooperation with NARIs.
- Working environments at the One CGIAR must address researchers’ work-life issues.
- One CGIAR requires research strategies that are policy-relevant and proven to work.
- One CGIAR must lead in advocating for and communicating about science.
Which I can’t really distinguish from what’s happening at the moment, except maybe in terms of quantity, but anyway.
Still waiting for reactions, in particular from NARIs. Go for it below…