We’ve blogged before about how cool it would be if agricultural production statistics were available in Gapminder, the visualization tool developed by the great Hans Rosling and his family. Well, the wait is over! Gapminder, which is now owned by Google, announced a couple of days ago that you can now use it to explore the FAOSTAT database. This will take weeks, if not months, to get to grips with, but I just leave you with a tasty morsel: what’s happened to area of fonio cultivation in Guinea and Nigeria in the past 45 years. Note the rapid increase in the past decade or so. And compare to the trend in overall production. Why has Guinea done so much better in increasing yields, at least since 1995? Real, or artifact? Oh, there will be so much fun to be had from this. Thanks, Gapminder! And thanks Jon for the headsup.
Crop wild relative helps Kew reach 10% milestone
Kew Gardens’ Millennium Seed Bank has reached its target of collecting 10% of the world’s wild plants, with seeds of a pink banana among its latest entries.
Congratulations, and happy birthday Kew! Interestingly, the wild banana in question, Musa itinerans, is also found in a genebank in Thailand, apparently as a breeder’s line, so it may well be useful in crop improvement.
LATER: Ok, this is why I talk 1 about genebank database hell. Musa itinerans is in the Musa Germplasm Information System, fourteen accessions of it, 2 conserved in vitro at the International Transit Centre, and in China and the Philippines. But it seems it is not in SINGER, for some reason, which is where I first looked for it. And neither of these two sources seem to have made it to WIEWS.
LATER STILL: And 3 specimens in botanic gardens. GBIF disappointing, only a couple of MoBo sheets. Literature suggests it might be a source of cold resistance, and maybe disease resistance too.
Nibbles: Markets, Easter Island, Honey, Coffee, Cowpea, Morocco, Urban Ag, Kenya
- I love pictures of agrobiodiversity in markets.
- Humans did for trees on Rapa Nui after all, not rats.
- Like refining chocolate, extracting honey is a fragrant, messy process. Bring it on.
- Fair Trade coffee unfair to farmers, CIAT says.
- Another day, another genome. This time it’s cowpea.
- 2000 year old food forest in Morocco. Honestly! And guess what? It’s not thriving.
- Another video (long). Education of an Urban Farmer.
- Education of an ex-pastoralist farmer, Karamojong, Kenya
The Kew publicity machine hits overdrive
Yes, there’s a twitter feed. Another video on youtube. A splurge on the BBC. And this teaser on Facebook:
On Thursday, Kew will announce a major conservation milestone for mankind. Any guesses?
I’m not sure about that, but I’m looking forward to the continued unfolding of the Royal Botanic Gardens’ new communications strategy, I must say.
Nibbles: Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Agrobiodiversity tourism, Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle, Eels
- A Sri Lankan renaissance farmer muses.
- A Mongolian renaissance farmer talks.
- The Opium Museum and the Corn Palace.
- Guam fights rhino beetle with virus to save coconuts.
- Dutch ban eel fishing.