- Coconut beetle attack in Cambodia.
- Indian Green Revolutionary goes organic.
- Forests leave fingerprint in wine.
- School gardening in Ghana, farmer field school for women and children in Panama.
- WWF launches podcast series “The Wild Things.” Bioversity to counter with “The Cultivated Things.”
- Oldest pottery found in Chinese cave with oldest rice.
- The transition to agriculture “was entered into slowly and reluctantly.” Evidence from the Netherlands, of all places.
- Got an apple orchard? Wanna be a star?
- Hunting down The Fruit Hunters.
Hundreds of 100 questions
Gosh, it’s difficult to keep track of this stuff. There’s been an explosion of “one hundred most important questions facing X” initiatives in the past couple of years. These are the ones I was able to track down, listed in no particular order, but there may be others out there, in which case let us know.
- 100 most important questions facing plant science research.
- Future novel threats and opportunities facing UK biodiversity identified by horizon scanning.
- The identification of 100 ecological questions of high policy relevance in the UK.
- One hundred questions to conserve global biodiversity.
I think the only one we actually blogged about here was the plant science one.
Anyway, I bring all this up because I’ve just heard that Professor Jules Pretty from Essex University is now spearheading an effort to summarize the world’s agricultural challenges down to the top 100 priority questions. Of course, the most interesting thing about these lists will be the intersection among them. Talk about bang for your buck.
Aurochs alive and well
Well, not quite. But some of their DNA is. A paper just out in PLoS ONE has found two mitochondrial DNA haplogroups (the ones labelled R and P in the diagram below) which apparently got into Italian local breeds from “European aurochsen [haplogroup E] as the result of sporadic interbreeding events with domestic herds grazing in the wild.” Some of these breeds are rare and marginalized, though, so even the last remnants of the aurochs might be in danger.
Featured: CWRs and protected areas
Our mate Danny weighs in on CWRs and protected areas:
Maybe what is required is a more dynamic approach to CWR conservation… A more holistic approach to increasingly mobile target areas.
And yes, he has some details.
The last colonial museum of economic botany reopens
Thanks to Dirk Enneking for this great tip:
One of my favourite museums and, apparently one of its kind, has just re-opened in Adelaide, South Australia, the Museum of Economic Botany, a former promotion facility for underutilised crops.
Looks great. If anyone goes, let us know about it. Thanks, Dirk.