The “Livestock based Geographical Indication chains as an entry point to maintain agrobiodiversity” Expert Meeting will be the third in the serious of events that FAO have recently organized in order to raise awareness about the importance of traditional products and their role in agriculture and rural development and agro-biodiversity preservation. The Budapest Expert meeting together with the South-East Europe Technical Seminar “Quality Food Products linked to Geographical Origin and Traditions” hold in Belgrade, Serbia in December 2008 and the Technical Forum “Geographical Indication and its contribution to Food Security” hold at the Berlin Forum International Green Week in January 2009, have the objective to constitute an important knowledge base for practitioners, scientists and decision and policy makers for their work related to geographical indications and rural development.
Nibbles: Ecosystem services, Breadfruit, Oneida corn, Teff
- Map your own ecosystem services.
- Diane’s Garden: the story of the world’s largest breadfruit collection.
- Oneida people rediscover their traditional white corn varieties.
- White folks discover Ethiopian grain. “Teff is tasty, cute, expensive, temperamental, and enigmatic.”
Round ’em up
Cattle rustling is rampant in Northern Ireland, 1 Uganda and the US. Is it the economic downturn, or did it never go away?
Purple pride
Purple sweet potato fries? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight. Anyway, let Ted Carey try to convince you.
“The CIP breeder sent me about 2000 seeds from crosses between purple parent plants that looked promising for regions like ours. In 2007, we planted those seeds at K-State’s John C. Pair Horticulture Center near Wichita. Each seed had the potential to be a unique new variety.”
Visiting NordGen
If you were intrigued by the source of the packet of germplasm I illustrated a few days ago, here it is:
It is the Nordic Genetic Resources Centre, or NordGen. It’s on the grounds of the Swedish Agricultural University at Alnarp near Malmo. As coincidence would have it I was up there in Alnarp earlier this week for a workshop, and managed to take a few photos. More later. As you can see, seed conservation is done in chest freezers, rather than the sort of walk-in cold room that you see in many genebanks around the world. Each freezer has a temperature probe, and if the temperature goes up too much, the genebank manager gets an SMS.