- ILRI slideshow on adapting South Asian livestock systems to climate change. And some background.
- Latest on Nepal’s new genebank.
- Salicornia 101.
- GENERA: a database of published, peer-reviewed scientific papers that are related to the risks and safety of genetic engineering in agriculture. Courtesy of Biofortified.
Nibbles: Sierra Leone, Cooking traditions, Value chains, Sorghum, Manihot, AnGR
- Sierra Leone gets back to (rural) work.
- Rachel Laudan not keen on UNESCO protecting culinary traditions.
- Value chains are hard.
- Dual-purpose sorghum in the CGIAR spotlight.
- Andy does cassava. Looks like he may need to buy a house in Bellagio.
- Latest Animal Genetic Resources is out. In other news, there’s an international journal called Animal Genetic Resources.
Nibbles: African data, Wild beans, Wild chickens, Heirloom tomatoes, Wild wheat
- African data centre planned.
- “…genetic variability and phenotypic plasticity of plant anti-herbivore defences allow plant populations to rapidly respond to changing environmental conditions.” In a crop wild relative, no less.
- The genetics of chicken domestication. I’d like to see the results of those crosses.
- Do you have these heirloom tomatoes?
- Getting increased heat tolerance from a wild relative into wheat.
The State of the World’s PGRFA
I’ve spent much of the day wondering what on Earth can usefully be said about the 2nd report on the State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, published today by FAO. Not a lot, I suspect, without wading through the entire tome. So what does FAO think is important?
Jacques Diouf, Director General of FAO, had this to say:
Increasing the sustainable use of plant diversity could be the main key for addressing risks to genetic resources for agriculture.
Sorry Jacques, old chum, but I just can’t quite seem to parse that one.
The report “does not attempt to quantify biodiversity loss,” for which we must be grateful, although the press release reminds us of FAO’s estimate that “75 percent of crop diversity was lost between 1900 and 2000” and “predicts that as much as 22 percent of the wild relatives of important food crops of peanut, potato and beans will disappear by 2055 because of a changing climate.” Right.
Genebank numbers and accessions are up, so those entries in the long-term memory have to be scrubbed and updated. 1750 genebanks, 130 have more than 100,000 accessions, 7.4 million samples, 6.6 million in national genebanks, 45 percent in just 7 countries, down from 12 in 1996. But hey, that’s probably rationalisation at work, because “in 2008, the ultimate back-up of global crop diversity, the Svalbald [sic] Global Seed Vault, opened in Norway”.
Carping aside, the report is a useful compendium of country reports (each downloadable as a separate PDF) and specially-commissioned thematic background studies (ditto) all served from an easy-to-use website (although the Picture Gallery doesn’t work for me yet).
Definitely an A for effort, then.
Nibbles: Studentship, Cowpeas, Chocolate, Quinoa, Rice in Madagascar, Jackfruit, Wheat breeding, Indian diversity
- PhD student from East Africa wanted to study greenhouse gases, biochar and other cool stuff.
- Weevils eat half the cowpea harvest. Solution in the bag.
- Ecuadorian chocolate experts visit the World Bank. Did they bring samples?
- Lots of ecdysteroids in quinoa. Not clear to me if this is good or bad.
- Yes, Malagasy rice is different.
- Evaluating a Dang Rasimi jackfruit. Looks pretty good to me.
- Crop wild relatives in genebanks help with drought tolerance in wheat.
- Meta-paper on livelihoods diversity in rice-wheat-livestock systems Indo-Gangetic Plains has no room for varietal diversity in rice-wheat.