Author: Luigi Guarino

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Starch-free potatoes to be protected

Malwi potatoes are significant because they contain negligible quantities of starch…

Wow, that would certainly be worth a Geographic Indication now, wouldn’t it? In fact, I’m reliably informed that what is happening is that potatoes grown in Malwa are high in starch because of the relatively hot temperatures there compared to other potato-growing regions of India. That makes them great for processing, whereas the same varieties grown elsewhere are apparently not suitable for this. Whether that makes Malwi potatoes eligible for GI is at best debatable, I would have said. But I’d be interested to hear from the experts.

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At work in the CIMMYT maize genebank


A CIMMYT staff member at work in the maize active collection in the Wellhausen-Anderson Plant Genetic Resources Center. CIMMYT’s germplasm bank contains around 28,000 unique samples of maize seed—including more than 24,000 farmer landraces; traditional, locally-adapted varieties that are rich in diversity—and 140,000 of wheat, including related species for both crops. The bank both conserves this diversity and makes it available as a resource for breeding. The active collection for meeting requests is kept at -3 °C, while the duplicate base collection for long-term storage is at -18 °C. Maize seed is stored in plastic jars, while aluminium envelopes are used for smaller wheat seed, and a sophisticated barcode system enables staff to keep track of the thousands of accessions. “Disaster proof” features of the bank include thick concrete walls and back-up power systems.

Photo credit: Xochiquetzal Fonseca/CIMMYT.

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Nibbles: AnGR, Sustainable diets, MDG, Plantwise, Maize in Africa, Lead farmers, Micro-livestock (again), Cows and climate change

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Gender inequity in agroforestry seed supply

You may remember that in last this week’s Brainfood we linked to a paper which looked at agroforestry input supply systems, and recommended a commercial, decentralized model for getting high quality tree seeds to smallholders. Now I’ve come across “Gender and agroforestry in Africa: a review of women’s participation.” The bottom line — not surprisingly, alas — is that women’s participation tends to be lower in enterprises in which there’s more money at stake. But this second paper only looked at the outputs, not the inputs. It would be interesting to know whether women tend to be edged out of commercial tree seed supply enterprises too. I suspect they do, which suggests that following the recommendation of the first paper for tree seed supply systems might result in even more pronounced gender inequity. So what could be done about it? Both papers include ICRAF staff as co-authors, though there’s no overlap. Maybe some of them have already thought about this and might like to comment here.