Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
How many times have we heard the (para-) phrase: “It’s simply impractical to bring populations of critically endangered species up into the thousands”?
Well, my friends, if you’re not talking thousands, you’re wasting everyone’s time and money. You are essentially managing for extinction.
Ouch.
FAO has just announced the publication of Composition of Selected Foods from West Africa.
The table includes 173 foods and 30 components. It is mainly a compilation of data from other food composition tables, theses and the scientific literature. It is one of the first regional food composition tables not only including data on commonly consumed raw foods but also cooked foods and on food biodiversity, i.e. data on variety level and on underutilized foods.
Well, that is all true as far as it goes, but I’m afraid it doesn’t really go very far. There are indeed data on things like fonio and baobab leaves in the table, which is very welcome. But the variety-level data are very limited, with maybe a dozen pearl millet and a few maize entries. Still a lot of work to be done there. Interestingly, the pearl millet varieties all have ikmp numbers (like ikmp-5), which suggests that they are selections made in Burkina Faso by INERA (Institut de l’Environnement et de Recherches Agricoles).