Author: Luigi Guarino

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CWR at Kew celebrations

Nigel Maxted has just sent a brief personal take on the recent Kew 250th anniversary celebrations to the Crop Wild Relatives discussion group. Here’s a snippet:

Personally I felt the audience was very receptive to the use and need for CWR conservation, but in my view far too many talks outside of the Plant conservation and agriculture session still failed to make the link between conservation and use. I would judge the gulf between the biodiversity and PGR sectors is still a problem that we need to address if we are to have ‘joined-up’ conservation of all biodiversity.

You can download Nigel’s presentation, “A global approach to crop wild relative conservation: Securing our food and agriculture gene pool.” But watch out, it’s a big PowerPoint file.

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Agrobiodiversity on display at SIRGEALC

One of the pleasures of going to SIRGEALC is looking at the posters. I especially like the ones which feature photographs of agrobiodiversity along with the required graphs and tables. Here are some impressions: Opuntia and tomatoes from Mexico, potatoes from Peru and chickens from Chile.

posters

One of the themes of the meeting was the development of lesser-known native agrobiodiversity, especially fruits. Here’s an example of value-adding and marketing of native fruits from the prize-winning agro-ecotourism project in Cotacachi, Ecuador, about which we’ve blogged before.

uvilla

In fact, Physalis seems to be a really up-and-coming fruit in its native continent. It was also on sale in dry form in Chile (along with other, more familiar, fruits).

fruit

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Pohnpei at the International Congress of Nutrition

Lois Englberger of the Island Food Community of Pohnpei has kindly agreed for us to publish her thoughts on the 19th International Congress of Nutrition.

I would like to share about our participation in the 19th International Congress of Nutrition (ICN), October 4-9, 2009, in Bangkok, Thailand, as part of the global health project, led by Professor Harriet Kuhnlein, Centre of Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE)/McGill University, and the CINE team.

The ICN was a huge event with 4560 delegates from 107 countries! Our oral presentations were on October 8, at the Symposium of Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems and Nutrition: Finding Solutions in Local Cultures and Environments, and were enthusiastically received.

I am happy to report that I wore my “Let’s Go Local” t-shirt and shared about the “Go Local” initiative.

Dr. Barbara Burlingame, Senior Nutrition Officer of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, also presented our Pohnpei Banana posters in her talk on food composition and biodiversity. This is an honor for Pohnpei! Thank you Barbara!

Also what a great privilege for Podis Pedrus and Kiped Albert, community leaders of Mand, Pohnpei, FSM, and myself to participate in the Satellite Workshop on Culture, Environment and Agriculture for Food and Nutrition Security of Indigenous Peoples, held 11-15 October in Thailand, supported by CINE and Thailand government.

This included academic and community leaders from the 12 case studies in the global health project led by Prof. Kuhnlein. The countries involved were Canada, Colombia, FSM, India, Japan, Nigeria, Peru, Tanzania, and Thailand. This was an extensive study of the traditional food system, diet and health, and implementation of a two-year promotion of local food for health.

We were delighted to visit the remote Sanephong Village in Thailand’s case study of the Karen people, as superbly coordinated by our colleagues from Mahidol University. What a special visit! Traveling to a remote Karen village, seeing the tremendous outpour of hospitality, learning about their work, enjoying a feast of traditional Thai food and beautiful dancing and singing, and even riding in an ox cart! Along with the visit to Sanephong, we had other field trips and an inspiring seminar at Mahidol University in Salaya, also coordinated by our Thai colleagues. There our Pohnpei team presented about our case study in Pohnpei, FSM.

This was based in Mand Community, Pohnpei. One of the project outcomes was the local food list, including scientific names and other information, and a total of 381 food items (what great diversity). After our two-year intervention, we were happy to find a significant increase in banana varieties consumed, increase in frequency of banana and giant swamp taro consumed, increased dietary diversity, and a positive change of attitude in the community.

We would like to thank again Professor Kuhnlein and the CINE team for involving Pohnpei, FSM; our Thai friends for their wonderful hospitality; our fellow case study friends; the ICN organizers and participants; and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for support for our participation in the event.

For more information about the global health project, see:
www.mcgill.ca/cine/resources/data/pohnpei/ — food photos/nutrient content
www.indigenousnutrition.org — documentaries
www.fao.org/docrep/012/i0370e/i0370e00.htm — recently published book 2