- Normal Russians hunt mushrooms.
- Committee on World Food Security meets. Not many people hurt.
- Normal Indian farmers go back to the future. So, in a different way, do Egyptian farmers. Rikin Gandhi probably knows all about it, and has made videos of it.
- I wonder if they’ve told the folks at the new, very agroecological Berkeley sustainable food institute. Though some would suggest they’re on a hiding to nothing there.
- You want past and future? Historical records used to predict spread of pests.
- When is development aid not development aid?
- Cherfas on Cavagnaro on seed saving. Trifecta.
- Cool ACIAR videos take me back to my stint in Fiji.
- International Conference on Utilization and Conservation of Crop Wild Relative (CWR) and Landrace (LR) Diversity for Crop Improvement. First order of business: think of a new name.
- Eden has a Baobab Festival. No word on the factsheet situation. But maybe you’d rather play it safe and try a peanut festival instead? OK, how about Coconuts of the Caribbean? No? Agrotourists of the Caribbean, then?
- Our Food. Our Future. Sustainability: The Bottom Line. Their presentations. Tell me if you find any agrobiodiversity in there. Well I dunno, maybe there will be some in the upcoming 2020 Policy Consultation on Building Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security, in 2014.
- Can you grow baobabs in a pot, I wonder? Or hydroponics for that matter.
- Salt-tolerant bacteria assist rooting in degraded soils. Easier than breeding, I guess.
- No consistent effect of domestication on stomata. Worth a try.
- Bayer goes to Hyderabad. To be near ICRISAT?
Brainfood: Wild maize diversity, Bacterial test, Rice diversity, Marginal biofuels, Rice roots, Farm diversification and returns, Sorghum shattering, Thinking conservation, Ethiopian peas
- Complex Patterns of Local Adaptation in Teosinte. It’s down to the inversions and the intergenic polymorphisms.
- A Stringent and Broad Screen of Solanum spp. tolerance Against Erwinia Bacteria Using a Petiole Test. The best genotypes are all in one, easily-crossed series.
- Genetic diversity, population structure and differentiation of rice species from Niger and their potential for rice genetic resources conservation and enhancement. Both cultivated species, plus hybrids. More diversity within ecogeographic areas than among them.
- Use of DArT markers as a means of better management of the diversity of olive cultivars. Some potential duplicates found. But will anything be done about it?
- “Marginal land” for energy crops: Exploring definitions and embedded assumptions. Whether it’s a good idea to relegate biofuels to marginal land to protect food crops depends on what you mean by marginal.
- Coconuts in the Americas. They came from the Philippines. Well, the ones on the Pacific coast did anyway.
- Control of root system architecture by DEEPER ROOTING 1 increases rice yield under drought conditions. And it came from a genebank accession, no less.
- Landscape diversity and the resilience of agricultural returns: a portfolio analysis of land-use patterns and economic returns from lowland agriculture. You want resilient returns? You need large(ish), diversified farms.
- Seed shattering in a wild sorghum is conferred by a locus unrelated to domestication. But close to it.
- When the future of biodiversity depends on researchers’ and stakeholders’ thought-styles. You have to agree on more than just how you do it when you’re collaborating on a multidisciplinary conservation project. You also have to agree on why you’re doing it.
- Characterization of dekoko (Pisum sativum var. abyssinicum) accessions by qualitative traits in the highlands of Southern Tigray, Ethiopia. Endemic pea diversity arranged by altitude.
Trouble in Lima?
Is there a Pavlovsk situation brewing in Lima? 1 The Sindicato Único de Trabajadores del Instituto Nacional de Innovación Agraria, which is the labour union representing workers at the national agricultural research institute (INIA), which has its headquarters at La Molina, a suburb of Lima, certainly think so. In an article entitled “Ministry of Agriculture wants to convert 30 thousand square metres of orchards into offices” featuring copies of allegedly relevant documents and even a video, the union suggests that the orchards in question are in fact genebanks, collections of mango, avocado and chirimoya.
That would certainly be bad. But is it true? It does seem to be true that the ministry wants to build additional offices on its land in La Molina, and that the land in question holds fruit trees. But are the trees part of a genetic resources collection? That is not so clear. WIEWS confirms that Peru does indeed have multiple collections of mango, avocado and chirimoya, but none of them seems to be on INIA land in La Molina. Admittedly, collections are recorded from La Molina for two of those fruits, but they appear to be on the property of the nearby agricultural university, not INIA. The other collections are in other research stations in different parts of the country.
Of course, the information in WIEWS may be out of date. Discreet enquiries with sources in a position to know suggest that the unions may well be overstating their case, but I have been unable to find an official response from INIA. Meanwhile, the institute is busy setting up more genebanks. No, not in La Molina.
If anyone out there can help us get to the bottom of this, let us know. But while we’re on the subject of fruit tree collections, let me link to what I believe is a new(ish) version of the website of the National Fruit Collection of the U.K., which includes a handy database. You may remember that this collection, at Brogdale, also went through a period of uncertainty. Let us hope that the INIA collection, if indeed it is a collection, emerges from its vicissitudes as strongly as Brogdale has.
Catching up on all those conferences
A mania for completeness compels me to take note here of two conferences about which we found out way too late. Various stars of the food security firmament met at the First International Conference on Global Food Security, 29 Sept-2 Oct at Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands. Note for example the presence among keynote speakers of our old pal Jess Fanzo. David Tilman, a diversity guru we have quoted here on occasion, was also in attendance. Meanwhile, over in Oxford, U.K. there was Biosymposium 2013 on 2-3 October, this year with a focus on biodiversity and resilience. Much less of direct interest to us here, apart from the contribution of another old pal, Ehsan Dulloo of Bioversity, tucked away in Session 2. If any of our readers were at either conference, and would like to share their impressions as they relate to agricultural biodiversity, I would hope by now they know what to do.
Featured: Banana export
Anne Vezina rails at banana taxonomists, and adds:
…the problem with exporting Misi Luki is that its skin bruises easily. While it’s true that local banana landraces are underutilized in general, it’s even truer of the bananas domesticated in the Pacific, which Misi Luki is not. The best known are the Maoli, Popoulu and Iholena bananas but the western Pacific is also host to a diversity of cultivars that have yet to be classified, much less evaluated for their export potential.