Very sad to hear of the death of Geoff Auricht on 7 September. He’d been battling a brain tumor. Geoff had a passionate commitment to the conservation and use of pasture genetic resources, with a particular interest in Medicago. I’ll never forget the month I spent collecting forage germplasm in Sicily with him many years ago.
A Pavlovsk lifeline
You’ll remember that the Russian Housing Development Foundation wants to build a luxury housing project on the site of the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry’s (VIR) unique fruit and berry germplasm collection at the Pavlovsk Experimental Station near St Petersburg. And that the conservation community has been trying to assist VIR’s staff via a petition in their attempts to stop this wanton destruction. Well…
…mounting pressure from scientists has now resulted in at least partial success. The RHDF has announced to ask an independent international expert commission to evaluate the situation at Pavlovsk before proceeding with its plans. Moreover, the Russian Accounts Chamber, a body controlling federal budgets, has announced to inspect the station on 15 September.
Great news indeed. But we’re not out of the woods yet. 1 It’s undoubtedly a victory, but we need to keep that pressure up.
The not so boring B-301 cowpea
Have a look at the comments to this post of ours from a few days back and then tell me that germplasm documentation doesn’t need a social networking makeover.
Nibbles: Cattle nutrition, Maize, Freshwater biota, Modeling maize, Rice, Book, Veg, Urban ag
- Climate change ain’t going to be good for cattle.
- But will be fabulous for breeders of drought-resistant maize.
- A fifth of Africa’s freshwater plants and animals threatened. How many of these are important to local people’s nutrition and health? A lot, I bet.
- Just a couple guys, modeling the spread of maize genetic diversity in the Americas.
- Uganda turns to wild relatives for new rice varieties.
- Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century recognizes importance of agrobiodiversity. Good to know.
- New Agriculturalist revisits veg-garden-in-a-sack.
- FAO policy brief on urban agriculture.
Daniel Debouck honoured
Daniel Debouck, a world expert on Phaseolus and the manager of CIAT’s genebank, 2 is to be awarded the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources. This is well-deserved recognition of three decades of painstaking work on the conservation and use of agrobiodiversity. Daniel’s latest paper in on Lima beans.
