- “All green chile derives its genetic base from the work of Fabian Garcia. We are at the center of the universe when it comes to chile because of Dr. Garcia.”
- Indian farmers move out of sugarcane, live to regret it.
- Freakonomists get Svalbard governance slightly wrong, but what the heck. Get it from the horse’s mouth.
- Adapting to climate change in Cuba through crop improvement.
- The Argentinian gauchos are running scared. And not just because of their pathetic football team.
- Microscopic remains of 30,000 year old flax cords found in Georgian cave. 30,000?
- Gotta fish less, boffins say.
- Growing shittake in a disused Mittagong railway tunnel.
- You remember our recent Dung of the Devil post? You remember how you thought it was a plant you didn’t need to know much about? Think again.
- BBC’s The Food Programme tackles African indigenous veggies.
Time to chew
Time magazine must be on an agrobiodiversity high. First, yerba mate. Now, qat.
Happy Ethiopian New Year!
To all our Ethiopian readers: Enqutatesh! Melakam Addis Amet!
Latin American drinks deconstructed
Alcademics has a couple of cool Peruvian booze stories. And Time has a photo essay on yerba mate. Amazing the diversity of drinks you can make from agrobiodiversity.
Adapting in the Pacific
The New Agriculturist is out, and, among many other things, it features an interview with my old boss at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), Aleki Sisifa. Aleki has some very sensible things to say about adapting to climate change. Here’s an example, but read the whole thing.
We need to help farmers stay ahead of climate change, and genetic resources are going to be crucial for that. At SPC we hold the genetic resources for the Pacific region, and as part of our climate change work we are collecting varieties that can withstand conditions such as drought, salinity and water-logging.
We are working to ensure fair use and ready access of these resources and, in June 2009, our collection was placed in the Multilateral System of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Around the same time, agreement was made with the Global Crop Diversity Trust to safeguard our collection of taro and yam, two of our most important food crops in this region.