Dr Hari D Upadhyaya, head of the ICRISAT genebank, has just been honoured as a Fellow of the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA). Hari has done a huge amount of work on the theory and practice of core collections, among other things. Congratulations, Hari. Richly deserved.
Book on gene flow published
I’ve just received a copy of “Gene Flow Between Crops and Their Wild Relatives” by Meike S. Andersson and M. Carmen de Vicente (Johns Hopkins). This will no doubt become the go-to reference book on the subject. There are chapters on all the major crops, with what look to me like very comprehensive bibliographies on each. Of particular interest are the maps of introgression risk at the end of the book. These will apparently be made available on the Bioversity website in due course. But here’s one (barley) in the meantime to whet your appetite.
Nibbles: Pastoralists, Millennium Village, African agriculture
- “The film showcases Bio-Cultural Protocols highlighting the Raika community of Rajasthan and the Samburu of Kenya. Developing Biocultural Protocols is an important means of implementing both paragraph 8j of the CBD and Strategic Priority 6 of the Global Plan of Action on Animal Genetic Resources.”
- How Ethiopia’s Millennium Village is doing.
- And along the same lines, what Pedro Sanchez has to say about African agriculture and that green revolution nit needs to have.
Nibbles: Indian apples, Taro leaf blight, Pachira
- Video on the effect of climate change on apple cultivation in Himachal Pradesh.
- Video on taro breeding in the Dominican Republic.
- Photos of Malabar chestnut.
Evil locavore Alice Walters destroys California education
When is it a bad idea for children to play around in school gardens?
This notion—that it is agreeably possible to do good (school gardens!) and live well (guinea hens!)—bears the hallmark of contemporary progressivism, a kind of win-win, “let them eat tarte tatin” approach to the world and one’s place in it that is prompting an improbable alliance of school reformers, volunteers, movie stars, politicians’ wives, and agricultural concerns (the California Fertilizer Foundation is a big friend of school gardens) to insert its values into the schools.