- The history of cacao cultivation, breeding and conservation in Trinidad explained.
- The latest update from Adam searching for seeds around the world. Go, dude.
- “Uganda exports 0.1% of the world’s gum Arabica…” Hardly seems worth it.
- Giving bees a hand. It’s hard to be a bee in the city.
- An active participation is required from the private sector and non-government organisations to take technological advances in farming and its practices to the grassroots level.”
- Kumwhat? Kumquat, that’s what.
- Bush sells maize. Maize surrenders.
- Let them eat weeds.
- But don’t let Thais eat herbs!
- Climate change bad for medicinal plants too.
- Banana wine in Malawi. Pass the bottle.
- How to make cachaca. A couple of friends and I once spent a night looking for the best caipirinhas in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Can’t remember if we found them.
- First Dog found.
Jigawa experiments with cattle diversity
About 30,000 cows drawn from different species will be used in Jigawa state for artificial insemination experiment before the end of May this year, the state commissioner of agriculture, Alhaji Nasidi Ali has said.
Ok, I suppose he meant breeds rather than species. Although a follow up quote from the commissioner adds that: “We want to change the species and varieties of cows in Jigawa state.” Anyway, one has to wonder what this will do to whatever local breeds ((There are also lists of local breeds from ILRI and FAO.)) roam around Jigawa State, Nigeria. The recent State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture did not paint a rosy global picture, you’ll recall.
Good news for wheat
Two studies out in the past week in Science are going to help wheat breeders fight diseases. One identified a DNA sequence — for a product known as the Lr34 transporter protein — which seems to confer protection against no fewer than three fungal diseases. And another study showed that a (different) DNA segment (called Yr36), which had previously been introgressed into durum wheat from wild emmer, also conferred rust resistance in the field (via). Gene discovery strikes again.
Mautam!
Once every 48 years, forests of the bamboo known as Melocanna baccifera go into exuberant flower in parts of northeast India. And then, like clockwork, the event is invariably followed by a plague of black rats that spring from nowhere to spread destruction and famine in their wake. For the first time on film, NOVA and National Geographic capture this massive rat population explosion in the kind of vivid detail not possible in 1959, when the last invasion occurred.
Sounds like a must-watch. Via.
Using wild rice to fight pests
Well, maybe. The article in The Monitor is a bit confused. Yes, there are wild rices in Uganda. I know because I was (marginally) involved in the 1997 Sida-IRRI project which collected wild Oryza in Eastern and Southern Africa. The material has been conserved since then in the National Genetic Plant Resources Centre for Crops in Entebbe, and has now been evaluated — successfully, it would seem — for resistance to Yellow Mottle Virus. Which is great. But the crossing with cultivated rice has not started in Uganda, I don’t think. The crosses that are alluded to in the article seem rather to have been between Asian rice and cultivated African rice (Oryza glaberrima), presumably aiming to replicate the success of Nerica in West Africa. Anyway, good luck to Drs John Mulumba Wasswa and Jimmy Lamo with the breeding programme.