Breeding – Page 493 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

October 24, 2006October 26, 2006

India has rice stuff, rices to occasion

India’s Financial Express has an interesting article on India’s efforts to breed better rice, including by using … gasp … biotechnology!

1. FAO explains why diversity matters.
2. Well, for one thing, food prices.
3. Ah, yes, diversity: “You gotta have it. You gotta use it. You gotta talk about it.”
4. Odisha mainstreams landrace diversity in its seed systems.
5. Meanwhile, the Farmers Union of Cyprus is stashing seeds away in Community Bank of Cypriot Traditional Seeds.
6. Looks a bit like the Groupements de Production Artisanale de Semences in Haiti. If you squint.
7. If only there were some guidelines for managing such community seed banks.
8. Iraq gets in on the act.
9. Iraq used to have a genebank, but what happened to it has just happened in Sudan.
10. Ah, to have a Climate—Conflict—Vulnerability Index so that such things could be predicted and steps taken.
11. And a monitoring system and some targets would be good too.
Published on August 12, 2025