- The latest tropical forages newsletter.
- The Edens Bluff seed bag for your pleasure. You’re welcome.
- SciDev.net thinks Yemen is in North Africa. Anyway, be afraid.
- Umbu and licuri are helping Brazilian farmers. Yeah, I don’t know what they are either. IFAD wants you to google them, I guess.
- The Mutant Millet project is a name to conjure with.
- As is the VIII International Scientific and Practical Conference on Biotechnology as an Instrument for Plant Biodiversity Conservation (physiological, biochemical, embryological, genetic and legal aspects).
- Four ways nutrition is good for development. Only four?
- What gets a new tuber accepted? Now there’s a project to find out. Only now?
Examples of ABS wanted
As part of BGCI’s Darwin Initiative project with the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute, BGCI is gathering practical examples of measures that ex situ collections, research institutions and their networks are taking to ensure that they acquire, use and transfer plant genetic resources and share benefits in compliance with national and international laws, respecting the rights of provider communities and in accordance with mutually agreed terms… BGCI seeks further examples of institutional and network ABS measures! Please send suggestions to abs@bgci.org.
No sign of the Seed Treaty’s ABS arrangements…
Early warning of crop diseases, and hopefully more
CIAT scientist Monica Carvajal has a great idea. She wants to develop a global crop disease surveillance system:
The system…will go beyond using the smartest tools to detect pathogens, which refer to organisms that harm plants such as viruses, fungi, bacteria, and phytoplasma. It will also include recommendations on how to best communicate the presence of emerging diseases to authorities and prompt necessary actions to avert a massive outbreak.
I hope it will also help to save any crop diversity threatened by the said pathogens, while at the same time identifying diversity that could be used to breed resistant varieties.
LATE: Follow the tweeting!
Gikuru kiega no kiratina
I’ve been dipping into my newly-acquired copy of the recent reprint of L.S.B Leakey’s classic The Southern Kikuyu Before 1903, and as luck would have it I happened on this:
Was not aware that Kenyans needed a reason for beer parties.
Nibbles: Svalbard, Irish Seed Savers Association podcast, Heirloom tomatoes, Rice genomes, Avocado history, 3D seeds, Agroforestry, Canarium development, IK, Indian nutrition, Biofortification, Salvia, Biorepositories best practices, Neurolathyrism
- The Smallholder on Svalbard. Martha unavailable for comment.
- Jeremy’s latest bit of blarney.
- Tasty toms.
- A bunch more rice genomes. Wait, didn’t we Brainfood this? Of course we did, ages ago.
- Avocado tattoos?
- 3D seeds. So beautiful, so useless.
- Trees as technology.
- Like galip nut, for instance.
- My indigenous knowledge is your climate change adaptation.
- Maharashtra: Malnutrition down, high blood pressure up.
- Could probably still do with some biofortification.
- The botany of chia.
- ISBER Best Practices for biological repositories: The Webinar.
- Meet ODAP.