- Ecological intensification: some new science to use.
- Tetraploid turnip tolerates salt.
- The Scientist Gardener does colourful pepper (mostly) breeding.
- “Envy holds back agricultural development.” Say wha?
- IFPRI sells what it is up to on Policies and Nutrition.
- Cleome gynandra is a C4 plant with wonderful adaptations; I bet the people eating it don’t know that.
- IRRI impresses UK diplomat, especially the genebank.
Nibbles: ABS in ITPGRFA, Wheat Yield Consortium, Plasticity and climate change, Sustainable intensification, Early agriculture
- Outstanding Issues on ABS under the Multilateral System – a background study paper. Wait, there’s outstanding issues?
- Wheat geeks meet.
- Plastic plants will cope with climate change. Not what you think.
- Nice write-up of the UK Foresight Food and Farming Futures report on Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture in Africa from Farming First.
- First farmers not as productive as last foragers. One wonders why they bothered.
A millet is a millet is a millet. Not
It’s been all over the news ((Relatively speaking.)) that a new hybrid millet from China is going to solve Africa’s food problems. Even our friends at CIAT think so. Nowhere does it say in the endlessly reproduced press release, however, what kind of millet we are talking about. Pearl? Broomcorn? Finger? Foxtail? Proso? ((Pop quiz. Which two of those are synonyms?)) What? Intensely annoying. Anyway, cut a long story short, it turns out to be foxtail millet, Setaria italica. We know because the “father of hybrid millet,” Zhao Zhihai, President of the Zhangjiakou Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hebei visited ICRISAT recently, and the information people there wrote up the visit, and took a photo to immortalize it.
But, as far as I know, foxtail millet is not much grown in Africa, so this statement in the press release is dubious to say the least:
“Millet is staple food in many African countries. The success of the ZHM’s pilot plantation promises good prospects for its mass production in Africa,” said Zhang Zhongjun, assistant to the FAO representative to China.
Pearl millet and finger millet are indeed staple foods in many African countries, but not foxtail of that ilk. Which is not to say that it could not become a staple. After all, it tastes better than teff, which, however, one is bound to point out, is not often called a millet.
“We helped some local farmers to grow the hybrid millet and promised to buy their harvests. But they refused to sell after harvests as they said the new millet tastes much better than their traditional millet, called teff,” Liu told Xinhua.
And that, dear reader, is why we have Latin names.
The CGIAR’s impact spelled out
The collaborative work of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has resulted in development impacts on a scale that is without parallel in the international community.
And there are 40 of them, more than half in crop improvement, half a dozen in natural resources management, a few in the policy arena. Anyone out there disagree? Anything left out? Anyone think some of “impacts” included are not so great after all? Let us know.
Let me start the ball rolling. I happen to think that putting together and maintaining the international germplasm collections, and placing them under the aegis of the International Treaty, is a significant technical and policy achievement in its own right. After all, they underpinned all that crop improvement. Maybe that doesn’t count as an “impact.” But perhaps it should.
Nibbles: Mapping species, Paddies, Duplicates in genebanks, Chinese mystery millet, Cherimoya, ITPGRFA, AnGR lectures, Bulgur, Heirloom apples
- Biogeographic Information System Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations. Not agrobiodiversity by any stretch but stunning all the same, and a clarion call to our community to sort out Genebank Database Hell, surely.
- Traditional paddies as ecosystems. Great ones, too.
- Title says “seed banks susceptible to sham samples,” text says not really, and maybe it doesn’t matter much anyway. Our take from a few days ago.
- China’s millet useful in Africa. Which millet? Your guess is as good as mine.
- Cherimoya going seedless.
- Annex 1 list of International Treaty on PGRFA to expand? Well, maybe. Whatever, wow.
- Lecture materials on conservation and use of animal genetic resources.
- The ancient fast foods of Greece.
- Conserving heirloom apples. Nice gig if you can get it.