- Tripping up trypanosomiasis: “It is a poverty fly.”
- Pumpkin patent squashed: “This is like trying to patent all trees with twisted limbs.”
- Indonesian bovines fingerprinted: “…the famous ‘racing bulls‘ from Madura descended from banteng cows.”
- Cropmobbing. Sounds like fun. Via.
Royal oxen turn up their noses
“This means we will have plenty of the corn and beans, but a poor rice harvest,” astrologer Kang Ken announced after the ceremony which was presided over by King Norodom Sihamoni.
Nibbles: CCD, Organic breeding, Bioprospecting
- “The growing consensus among researchers is that multiple factors such as poor nutrition and exposure to pesticides can interact to weaken colonies and make them susceptible to a virus-mediated collapse.”
- “…breeding spring wheat specific to organic agriculture should be conducted on organically managed land.”
- “A project developing medicinal products from plants found in Kakamega forest, western Kenya, has transformed the livelihoods of nearby communities…”
VIR at war
I’m going to have to take back what I said about English Russia. Just a couple of days after it featured old photos of Russian agriculture, today there’s more of agrobiodiversity interest. Sergei Larenkov mashes up images of modern St Petersburg with photos taken during the siege. Below is one of St Isaac’s Square. There are several others. It was a cabbage patch during the war. The building in the middle is — and was — part of the Vavilov Institute.
Compare it with the picture I took recently.
Kesar magoes on the ropes in Gujarat
Farmers in Gujarat are cutting down their mangoes because they no longer yield enough.
Kanu Korat, a farmer of Mandola village in Talala, earlier grew Kesar mango trees on 3.5 hectares of land; but he had to hew them owing to the crop failure. A change of weather conditions in recent times ruined the crop in the region, with mango production falling by 75 per cent. As a result, the farmers here have not been able to quote the normal price of mangoes.
That’s a pity, because Indian mangoes have only recently been allowed back into the US market. I don’t know anything about mango diversity, but the Kesar variety seems popular and fairly common (over 8,000 Google hits), so I don’t suppose it will be endangered by the cull. But still. The shape of things to come? Is this climate change in action?