- Let “The Bean Counters” show you where to collect wild Phaseolus.
- Protected areas get wikified.
- Expensive book published on the heritage breeds of New Zealand.
- Wild boar going crazy in France.
- Another Hawaiian taro festival. And why not.
- Ecosystems for climate change adaptation. No agroecosystems though.
- Moringa! Not just for people.
- Camelina! Not just for Europeans.
- What is it about barley wild relatives lately?
Nibbles: Abalone, Yak, Forests, Mountain plants, Yams, Ulmus, Apple, Banana
- We now know how to harvest abalone sustainably. Is there anything we cannot do?
- Wild yaks get assessed. Wait, there are wild yaks?
- “…forests played a central role in the rise of the modern state.” Not as flaky as it sounds.
- Andean plants at risk from, well, everything.
- Yams in Nigeria, from festivals to in vitro.
- London’s elms.
- “[L]ike biting into a perfume bottle, but without shards of glass piercing your tongue.” A knobbed russet.
- Banana evolution just got more complicated.
Nibbles: Nepal genebank, Banana mapping, PNG diet, Climate change
- More on the inauguration of the new Nepal genebank.
- Someone else thinks crop production maps might be useful in prioritizing germplasm collecting. No, wait…
- Diverse diets are good for you. Well I never. No, it’s always good to have the data.
- Andy Jarvis feeds reptiles climate change facts shock.
Live tweeting The Big Nature Debate
Well that was fun. Along with a few others, I live tweeted The Big Nature Debate which took place at the Natural History Museum in London on the afternoon of 7 October. You can get a flavour by checking the naturedb8 hashtag, ((How long does Twitter keep tweets?)) but I wasn’t very consistent in using it, and neither were the others, so you might need to hunt around for more, untagged tweets. Best point made? Well, apart from the one about weevils being important too (as pollinators of oil palm, among other things), that biodiversity conservation needs to talk to agriculture. I think that came from Professor Jon Hutton, Director of the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre. And vice versa. As pointed out using crop wild relatives as an example by Paul Smith, Director of the Millennium Seed Bank, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens.
FAO puts crop calendars online
An interesting new feature from FAO’s seeds group:
The Crop Calendar provides information about sowing and planting seasons and agronomic practices of the crops grown by farmers in a particular agro-ecological zone. It is a tool developed to assist farmers, extension workers, civil society and the private sector to be able to access and make available quality seeds of specific crop varieties for a particular agro-ecological zone at the appropriate sowing/planting season. It can be used by development-aid workers in the planning and implementation of seed relief and rehabilitation activities following natural or human-led disasters. Furthermore, the Crop Calendar can serve as a quick reference tool in selecting crop varieties to adapt to changing weather patterns accelerated by climate change.
The Crop Calendar database is being maintained at a regional level and is based on inputs from member countries. The Crop Calendar database currently covers 43 African countries and contains information on more than 130 crops, located in 283 agro-ecological zones.
I hope member countries will be encouraged to do what Congo did for sweet potato, which is to record the calendar data separately for improved and local varieties.