Brainfood: PGRFA prioritization, Endangerment value, Geo-genetic visualization tool, USDA quinoa collection, Wild sesame conservation, USDA genebanks & climate change, Clover genetic changes, Collecting Comoros cassava, Sunflower breeding history, Durum breeding, Rice genebank tools

Genebanks for today AND tomorrow

Genebanks have a communication problem: they are a do-something-for-tomorrow thing in a something-must-be-done-now world. Well, it turns out that some important people are increasingly seeing these two seemingly quite different ways of prioritizing as not necessarily mutually exclusive. This is from last week’s The Economist:

In a recent article, a number of world leaders including Joe Biden of America, William Ruto of Kenya and Muhammad bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates wrote that they were convinced “poverty reduction and protection of the planet are converging objectives”. Some policies do indeed provide useful fixes for both. Sustainable agriculture cuts emissions, climate-proofs the food supply and reduces the risk of famine…

Now to convince Messrs Biden, Ruto et al. of the connection between sustainable agriculture and crop diversity…

LATER: Maybe add the Chinese authorities to that list?

Nibbles: Milpa revival, Cretan olive, Lost apples, Moche meals, African agroecology, Global Tree Knowledge Platform, Issues in Agricultural Biodiversity

  1. Marketing the milpa.
  2. Marketing a traditional Cretan olive variety.
  3. Finding lost apples in New England. Now to market them.
  4. Taking new passion fruit varieties to market in Australia.
  5. Deconstructing Moche history, society and culture through compost and struggle meals. No sign of markets.
  6. Reviewing the state of agroecology in Africa. Does “economic diversification” count as marketing?
  7. The Global Tree Knowledge Platform must have stuff on marketing somewhere.
  8. The books series ISSUES IN AGRICULTURAL BIODIVERSITY, now free to download, has lots on marketing.

Brainfood: Croplands, Satellite phenotyping, Farm size, Bt double, Scaling up, Opinion leaders, Gendered knowledge, OFSP, Ethiopia sorghum diversity, Banana bunchy top, Climate change & pathogens, Bean pathogens, Mixtures, Rewards