Author: Luigi Guarino

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Who you gonna call?

If you’re in the Pacific region and you’ve got a problem in the following areas, that is:

  • Animal health & production
  • Biosecurity & trade facilitation
  • Crop production
  • Genetic resources
  • Forests and trees
  • Forestry & agriculture diversification
  • Information & communication and extension
  • Plant health
  • Agriculture & forestry policy

SPC, that’s who, by email. Great to see my old colleagues in the Land Resources Division in Fiji setting this up. It builds on the pioneering work of PestNet in the region. Best wishes to them all.

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Nibbles: Cacao, Forbes, Gum arabic, Bees, Private sector, Kumquats, Maize, Edible weeds, Herbs, Medicinals, Banana wine, Cachaca. Obamas’ dog

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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.

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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.

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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.