Author: Luigi Guarino

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Nibbles: Introgression in sorghum, British cheese, Cassava development, Fishing

  • “Farmers have quite accurate perceptions about the genetic nature of their sorghum plants, accurately distinguishing not only domesticated landraces from the others, but also among three classes of introgressed individuals, and classing all four along a continuum that corresponds well to genetic patterns. Their practices are fairly effective in limiting gene flow”
  • Cheese map of Britain. Had no idea there was a National Cheese. I always liked Wensleydale.
  • “I harvested part of the cassava and transported it to the nearest processing centre, where it was peeled, washed, pressed, dried and milled into cassava flour. They charged me Tsh600 per kilogramme (about half a dollar) and the market price was Tsh380 a kilo.”
  • The giant Ponzi Scheme that is modern fishing.
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Andy Jarvis in the limelight

Our friend, colleague and occasional contributor Andy Jarvis received GIBF‘s Ebbe Nielsen Prize for innovative bioinformatics research last night in Copenhagen. Andy has been doing his trademark work on the spatial analysis of crop wild relative distributions 1 at CIAT, just outside Cali in Colombia, jointly with Bioversity International. He used the occasion to highlight the contribution made to this effort by his numerous Colombian colleagues. Congratulations to all of them.

Phaseolus_current_ predicted_ species_ richness

after

LATER: Here’s Andy’s talk.

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Not or, but and

…advocates of environmental conservation, organic farming and commercial agriculture all need to put down their guns and work toward solving the problems of food security and the environment — with everyone at the table.

Pretty good advice.

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Celebrating rice

Have we already blogged these interviews with rice people? Check out, for example, Peter Jennings, IRRI’s first breeder, on the genesis of IR8, among other things.

It’s IRRI’s 50th anniversary next year, don’t forget. I guess the celebrations kick off with the 6th International Rice Genetics Symposium in Manila in November. And reach a climax at the 3rd International Rice Congress (IRC 2010) next November in Hanoi. Wonder if any spanners will materialize.