I know it’s a long shot, but are any of our readers going to the conference on Plant Abiotic Stress Tolerance next month in Vienna? It seems to be mainly about Arabidopsis, but the final session on breeding might just hold some agrobiodiversity interest, and if so we’d love to know about it.
Europe invaded by aliens
The journal Diversity and Distribution has a paper on the distribution of alien plants in Europe. You need a subscription for that, but the paper also appears to be online here, on the website of one of the authors. Here’s the map (click to enlarge it):
Could this be used to estimate the level of threat faced by some crop wild relatives?
Nibbles: Peanut butter, Slow Food, Pacific, School, Carnations
- “The legume that giveth can also taketh away.”
- Content Coordinator at Slow Food Nation asks: “Am I a coniglio?“
- Tracing Pacific migrations through stomach bugs.
- Rethinking school lunch.
- “There is still a stigma to the flower.†Er, yes, and your point is?
Fowl play
The Rai3 TV programme Geo&Geo had a great little piece last night on AIRPA, which stands for Allevatrici Italiane Razze Pregiate Avicole. That translates as Italian Rearers of Esteemed Breeds of Fowl. But the word for “rearers” is in the feminine form, which means the society is open to women only. The rationale for this is as follows, according to the website: “le donne cercano di vedere le cose dal punto di vista dell’animale, applicano un allevamento compassionevole, solidarietà , maggiore delicatezza.” That is, women try to see things more from the point of view of the animal, and are more compassionate and delicate towards them. That was certainly obvious from the interviews in the programme. Anyway, if you’re interested in a list of fowl breeds in Italy, here it is.
Meat is murder
Murder to produce sustainably, that is. And here are three stories to prove it. In the arid West of the US, overgrazing has been stripping away the ground cover, and the soil, for decades. Some enterprising ranchers have finally seen the light, however, and are experimenting with how they graze cattle, moving their herds more, giving the vegetation time to bounce back, mimicking the behaviour of the mobile herbivores of the African savannas. But the jury is still out on whether it works, whether “sustainable ranching” is just the oxymoron many environmentalists have always said it is. Meanwhile, in Tibet, climate change is drying up streams. Shepherds have to go twice as far to take their flocks to water. Farmers have to dig twice as far down to strike water in their wells. And finally, all over the world, frogs are being driven to extinction because of our taste for their legs. It’s enough to drive one to vegetarianism.