Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Occasionally — just occasionally — Genebank Database Hell doesn’t live up to its fearsome reputation. Or maybe it’s just diminished expectations on my part, I’m not sure. Anyway, Eurisco confirms that the Irish onion called Buan Jeremy blogged about yesterday is found in the genebanks at Warwick and VIR. Interestingly, a grand total of 7 onions of Irish origin are in existence in the world’s genebanks, most of them at VIR. Thank goodness for Europe’s amateur heirloom gardeners, eh?
Prof. Bikram Gill of Kansas State University is to be awarded the Crop Science Society of America’s Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources. Prof. Gill is Director of the Wheat Genetic and Genomic Resources Center in the Department of Plant Pathology. I’ll let him tell you about his work. Congratulations.
As a public service, here, all in one place and in order, are the 7 parts of Gary Nabhan’s recent “Redesigning Regional Food Traditions” talk at Clackamas Community College, Oregon City, Oregon.
Sometimes a paper comes down to just one diagram or table. Like the one above. There’s a few ins and outs to this study, a few whys and wherefores. And you should probably read the whole thing and take notes and follow up the references and maybe drop a line to the authors for clarifications. But there’ll be no getting around the fact that kids who had access to homegardens didn’t need vitamin A supplementation to avoid night blindness, whereas kids who didn’t, did. Thanks to Jess for the tip.