Dirk tracks down Meyer’s giant peach in situ:
The giant is alive and well. The Feicheng peach is also known as Buddha peach…
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Obligatory photos of agricultural biodiversity in Thai floating market go online to stifled yawns
I’m very ignorant about SE Asia, so I assumed that the famous (or infamous) “floating market of Bangkok” would be in Bangkok, rather than over 100km away. I also didn’t really expect it to be quite the tourist trap it is. Oh well. But they do sell a remarkable variety of fruits, vegetables and other assorted agrobiodiversity there. Go to my Flickr page and leave as many identifications as you can.
Nibbles: Kerr reports, Monsanto shares, Thailand patents
- Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture mourns loss of agricultural biodiversity, issues report.
- Monsanto “shares with farmers the science behind the technology.” Nice of them.
- Thailand patents (transgenic) jasmine rice to “keep foreigners out of our paddy fields.” So much to say about this, so little time.
“Barley-wheat” explained
There’s a National Agricultural Science Museum on ICAR’s the Indian Agricultural Research Institute’s Pusa Campus 1 and I spent an enjoyable hour or so wandering around it during my recent visit to Delhi. One floor takes the visitor on a whirlwind tour of agriculture on the subcontinent from the Neolithic to the Green Revolution. Then you go down some stairs for exhibits on the current state of Indian agriculture. The displays and eye-catching, informative and well-arranged. My only complaint would be about the lack of explicit references to the importance of agrobiodiversity, its conservation and use, for sustainable agriculture, apart from a poster on the Green Revolution. But then the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources has its own museum.
Taking photographs was not allowed, so I can’t show you the wonderful diorama of a Mughal garden, and other great exhibits. I do hope the museum goes online sometime. Best I can do at the moment is this scan of the brochure that is handed out as you leave (click to enlarge).
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The debunking of the genetic erosion meta-narrative continues
Regular readers will be familiar with our skepticism here at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog about the genetic erosion meta-narrative. Not with the fact that genetic erosion has in fact occurred, and is continuing to occur, of course. Just with the notion that it has occurred everywhere, for every crop, to the overall tune of “75% over the past century.” There’s now news of a further nail in the coffin of that hoary myth.
Continue reading “The debunking of the genetic erosion meta-narrative continues”