Luigi Guarino

March 15, 2011June 20, 2011

Yemen spatial data online, sort of

For what it’s worth, I have enormous admiration for IFPRI and its products. Not that they give a damn about that, but I just want to get it out of the way before slamming them. First, the news item on a new interactive atlas of food security in Yemen doesn’t have a link to the new interactive atlas of food security in Yemen. Not to worry, though, Google is your friend, ¹ and it’s not all that difficult to find the relevant page on the IFPRI website. But then the new interactive atlas of food security in Yemen turns out to be nice enough as to content, but highly frustrating to use. No way to download or export maps. I had to get the thing below (showing barley cultivation, for the record) through a screen grab. Yuch.

And no way to mash up the results with other stuff. Like, for example, barley accessions in Genesys. Which in contrast you can export in a number of ways.

Oh, sure, there are some words of explanation, if not excuse:

The online version does not require installing software but it is more limited in the sense that the underlying data cannot be accessed by the user (unlike in the case of the download of the data package).

But I don’t believe it would be that difficult to allow some sort of exporting online. Maybe I’m wrong. Someone tell me, please.

So, anyway, two maps which cry out to be looked at together, for example in Google Earth, and no way of doing so, at least that I can see. As I say, very frustrating. Who do I complain to? There someone in the CGIAR to whom I can go with a query about spatial data, right? Isn’t there?

March 15, 2011March 15, 2011

Nibbles: Mapping species, Paddies, Duplicates in genebanks, Chinese mystery millet, Cherimoya, ITPGRFA, AnGR lectures, Bulgur, Heirloom apples

Biogeographic Information System Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations. Not agrobiodiversity by any stretch but stunning all the same, and a clarion call to our community to sort out Genebank Database Hell, surely.
Traditional paddies as ecosystems. Great ones, too.
Title says “seed banks susceptible to sham samples,” text says not really, and maybe it doesn’t matter much anyway. Our take from a few days ago.
China’s millet useful in Africa. Which millet? Your guess is as good as mine.
Cherimoya going seedless.
Annex 1 list of International Treaty on PGRFA to expand? Well, maybe. Whatever, wow.
Lecture materials on conservation and use of animal genetic resources.
The ancient fast foods of Greece.
Conserving heirloom apples. Nice gig if you can get it.

March 14, 2011February 16, 2021

African indigenous vegetables information published

Notice of the publication of the new book “African Indigenous Vegetables in Urban Agriculture” by Earthscan allows me to point out that Bioversity has also just published a study of the impact of its interventions in that area of agrobiodiversity.

March 14, 2011March 16, 2011

Cooperation in Bali, now and then

As the Fourth Regular Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture gets off the ground in Bali, Indonesia, it may be useful to reflect, as Steve Lansing does in a fascinating talk, on what modern agriculture can learn from Balinese rice production. It turns out to be a lesson about the benefits of cooperation. ²

Synchronised irrigation schedules improve harvest and also reduce variance in harvests. The reduction in variance is potentially significant, because large differences in harvest could discourage cooperation by farmers with suboptimal harvests.

March 14, 2011March 14, 2011

Genebanks under threat all over

More bad news for the Egyptian Deserts Genebank. El-Sayed Mohamed El-Azazi tells us of a fire on Thursday 10 March, mainly affecting the glasshouses, by the look of it. The cause is unknown, but El-Sayed does say there is no security at all on the premises still. Coincidentally, there was a piece on El Masry Al Youm (Egypt Today, I believe) on the quite separate National Gene Bank of Egypt the very next day, painting a somewhat surreal, under the circumstances, picture of tranquility and business-as-usual.

As for the situation in Japan, still no news of any damage to genebanks there. The recently published Google Earth plugin modeling the height of the tsunami is incredibly scary. Black is >250cm, even orange is 50cm.