- Norway protects eels.
- 3d interactive training materials for beekeeping and sorghum cultivation.
- More on the Hawaiian GM taro story.
Nibbles: Bats and bananas, Extension, Russian animal harvests, Rice improvement, Sacred groves
Bad news from Tehran
In addition to everything else, it seems that the Turkman horse is under threat of extinction. 1 The problem seems to be interbreeding with Throughbreds, and owners unwilling to risk pure-bred Turkmen horses, which are expensive, in races where there is a risk of injury and prize money is low. According to one expert:
Iranian horses have unique features such as smartness, nobility, special physical conditions and high endurance level which cannot be observed in any of the imported horses.
Among the proposals to save the Turkmen horse are a genebank (not sure how that would work) and a breed register, which would probably require DNA testing for individuals.
One thing puzzles me. In the very restricted genetic bottleneck that resulted in the English Thoroughbred is a fine animal known as The Byerly Turk. Was it really a Turk? Wikipedia thinks not. More to the point, one can only be grateful that the English did not decry all that messy genetic pollution that gave rise to the English Thoroughbred.
Searching for seeds, and hope
Some people have emailed me from the blog and accused me of saying Indian people must stay poor and we must go back to the stone age. This is not at all what I believe.
Adam Forbes, after a year in search of seeds, tells us what he does believe.
Nibbles: Poisonous cassava, Methane, Beer
- Tragic. But was cassava really to blame?
- Breeding the wind out of cows.
- “I just got back from Italy, where there are now 250 breweries. A few years ago, there were only 20 or 30. They’re on the verge of an explosion of beer culture…” Really? I do hope so.