Author: Luigi Guarino

Posted on

Let Greenpeace pick up the bill

One of the most emotional campaigns that Greenpeace says it is undertaking in Mexico, led by the Argentine Gustavo Ampugnani, is the defense of diversity of native maize against the cultivation of transgenics. Another lie, then.

If indeed that is the purpose, the NGO should donate money to supporting the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) in Texcoco, led by Thomas Lunpkyn, which keeps in a giant refrigerated bunker germplasm of 194 species of American maize, of which 57 varieties are Mexican in a total of 27 thousand samples. The annual budget of the CIMMYT, the cradle of the Green Revolution led by Norman Borlaug, is not more than 23 million pesos. The yearly cost of Greenpeace propaganda against transgenic corn is greater than the budget of a center that has generated seed of such high yield and nutritional quality as the HV-313 maize and Salamanca wheat without using polluting pesticides.

Ok, sorry for the maladroit translation. You can read the original column by Mauricio Flores in “La Razon.” He recently visited CIMMYT, apparently, and was impressed with the genebank. Nice idea. Not sure about those numbers though.

Posted on

Nibbles: Vegetable seeds, Colorado potato beetle, Castanea, Pigs, Condiments, Porpoise, Biofuels, Mouflon, Blackwood

  • European are growing more vegetables. But how much of that is heirlooms?
  • Canadian boffins grow wild potatoes for the leaves.
  • Chinese wasp going to roast Italy’s chestnuts.
  • The genetics of swine geography. Or is it the geography of swine genetics?
  • The diversity of sauces.
  • Cooking Flipper.
  • Genetically engineered brewer’s yeast + cellulose-eating bacterium + biomass = methyl halides.
  • Wild sheep runs wild in Cyrpus.
  • “It can be planted in farms because it does not compete for resources with corn, coffee or bananas and acts as a nitrogen-fixing agent in the soil. The mpingo is also considered a good luck tree by the Chagga people who live on the slopes of the Mt. Kilimanjaro.”
Posted on

A Star is Born

Dr Masaru Iwanaga used to run the CIAT genebank and has been deputy director general of Bioversity International and director general of CIMMYT. He is now director of the National Institute of Crop Science in Tsukuba, Japan. He’s had a lifelong committment to the use of agricultural biodiversity. He was recently interviewed for Japanese TV, and a preview of the result is online. (You can also download the full 28 minute video but you have to install stuff.) Alas, it is, of course, entirely in Japanese, but it seems to me that everybody enjoyed the experience tremendously. Just wish I could follow what’s going on. Can anyone help with a translation?


Watch BMGM_0526 in Animation  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com