Readers with a long(ish) memory may remember some uncertainty a couple of years back over the future of the UK’s national collections of vegetable diversity at Wellesbourne. I’m glad to say the genebank is flourishing as part of Warwick University, with funding from Defra. It even has a Twitter feed, over which there is currently in course an interesting discussion of Cornish cauliflowers.
The hanging yams of Ibadan
Dr Lopez Montes of @IITA, member of @CGIAR in Ibadan Nigeria showing fast breeding of water yams thru vine cutting pic.twitter.com/Op5W4k3a
— Frank Rijsberman (@FrankRijsberman) July 19, 2012
Intrigued? You can read more about these hanging bags, and how they fit into IITA’s yam development strategy in general, in a recent article in the centre’s very readable R4D Review. 1
Nibbles: Genebanks on the edge
Nibbles: Climate change data, Transcriptomics, Food industry trends, Gelato event
- Climate Adaptation Country Profiles from the World Bank. Better than you might think.
- You don’t need the whole genome, apparently. Now they tell us.
- Where the global food industry is going. Some opportunities there if you think agrodiversity is important, Shirley.
- Wait, there’s a 6-day international event on gelato?
Tenerife diversity illustrated
The Centro de Conservación de la Biodiversidad Agrícola de Tenerife (CCBAT) has a Facebook page on which they have just announced the release of an attractive new poster of bean diversity, reproduced here. There’s also one about potatoes. And a book summarizing traditional diversity in all the crops.
