Luigi Guarino

May 2, 2014May 3, 2014

Embrapa’s new genebank illustrated

If we missed reporting the opening of Embrapa’s new genebank, ¹ it’s because the news seems only to have come out in the Brazilian press.

A modern building of over two thousand square feet, divided into two floors, will house one of the largest collections of genetic resources and is the third largest facility in the world in terms of storage capacity. Opened on the morning of April 24, the new genebank started the celebrations of 41 years of Embrapa.

If you search around, you’ll find various photos of the interior of the new building, but I could not find a single one of the outside. So here goes. It was taken a couple of months ago. I expect it’s all tidied up now.

For completeness, the green building in this last shot is the old genebank, which is next door to the new one.

May 2, 2014May 2, 2014

National Geographic and FAO share data and limelight

The next step of National Geographic’s eight-month series on food ² seems to be to team up with FAO.

From May through December, FAO experts will provide perspective and data for National Geographic’s food coverage, which includes in-depth articles in the magazine each month and additional features on the NatGeoFood.com website. Both organizations will share content and participate in related events to help educate and promote awareness about hunger and nutrition.

The first such event is a panel discussion today — Food: A Forum — at National Geographic’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. But that’s not all:

The panel discussion will be followed by a two-day Future of Food Hackathon May 3 and 4, during which scientists, data journalists and programmers will develop apps and tools to address solutions for feeding the planet by exploring broad FAO data sets that shed light on food distribution, transportation, costs and environmental legacy over the last 50 years.

Will they talk to Colin Khoury of CIAT, whose recent paper on the globalization of diets was based on FAO data? ³ Would be interesting to know whether NatGeo’s plans for its food series include a bit more collaboration with CGIAR — that is, people like Colin — than the admittedly impressive photo essay on Finding the Faces of Farmers. Finding the Faces of CGIAR Genebankers, anyone?

May 1, 2014

Ecuador puts its money where its chocolate is

Tweets emerging from the workshop on Climate Change and the Cocoa Industry: Leveraging Science and Technology for Sustainability at the Belfer Center last night suggest that there’s something of a revolution brewing in cacao research:

#Ecuador to create world's first #cocoa and #chocolate university http://t.co/fUiNXbAFoU http://t.co/lwMp74Kewh

— Calestous Juma (@calestous) April 30, 2014

Theobroma, wild and cultivated, has played and important part in the country’s history and economic development. And the diversity of the crop has been said to be threatened, despite largish collections. So it probably does make financial sense to invest in cacao research. The devil will be in the details. One to watch.

May 1, 2014May 1, 2014

Nibbles: Extreme aquaculture, GMO ver. 2.0, Wheat genebank, Infrared coffee spectroscopy, Farmer photos, Land grab, Reindeer herder photos, Mapping blight, Food security software, Fragaria moschata

Farming cobia off Panama. Look it up.
Gene editing is the future. But is it GM?
More on the CIMMYT genebank from the Australian press. Get a room already.
Fancy machine can tell fancy Yemeni coffee from lesser stuff. No, not DNA. Producers of lesser stuff unavailable for comment.
Some of them may end up being photographed by National Geographic though.
Before being forced off their land.
Different sort of land grab in the Gran Chaco. Pity those poor wild Arachis. And here’s a meta-analysis of the drivers of the problem.
Feeling left out, herders get fancy photos too.
“The data indicates a broad distribution of this clone from Spain to Russia and Scotland to Cypress.” Good grief. Potato blight, if you’re still interested.
From household survey data to food security assessment: The software.
The bubbleberry is increasingly a thing.

April 30, 2014May 5, 2014

South Pacific genebank overture

Can’t resist posting this video from my old colleagues at SPC. ~~It ends a bit abruptly, but Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees, and a nice overview of its work.~~

LATER: This is the full version of the video, without that weird abrupt ending. Some problem with the uploading, apparently.