The International Potato Center (CIP) has announced the launch of two databases. One is on its potato and sweetpotato genebank holdings, and the other on advanced potato varieties and clones. Will their usability and content satisfy Jeremy? Do they satisfy you? Check them out and let us know what you think, we promise to pass the message on.
Agriculture hits limelight in Copenhagen. Maybe.
Today’s the big day for agriculture in Copenhagen. A lot is riding on it, because there hasn’t been much sign of interest at UNFCCC COP15 up to now in the subject of how agriculture is going to adapt to climate change. You can follow Cary Fowler’s Notes from Copenhagen on Facebook.
Finding Vavilov. Not.
A user gets stranded in Genebank Database Hell looking for Vavilov’s collections in Tunisia. Not for the fainthearted.
Bent Skovmand remembered
A Facebook post by Dag Endresen of NordGen alerted me to the recent publication of the biography of Bent Skovmand, entitled The Viking in the Wheat Field: A Scientist’s Struggle to Preserve the World’s Harvest. Bent Skovmand (1945-2007), a student of Norman Borlaug, was a very influential figure in the world of conservation and use of crop genetic resources in general, and of wheat in particular. The director of the Nordic Gene Bank (now NordGen) when he died, the books he kept in his office are touchingly maintained at NordGen’s Alnarp headquarters as a separate collection. I’ll be trying to get hold of the book.
Nibbles: Two fish
- Thai village brings back mangroves, fish.
- Elsewhere, aquaculture is forced further and further offshore.