- Our friends at the Global Crop Diversity Trust have been busy:
- “Experts: Failure to focus on farming will undermine global climate agreement and increase hunger.” Er … what agreement?
- Oh, and we need more money, please.
- Tomorrow, US Congress briefed on soil microbiology and Vitis fermentation products, aka terroir.
- IRRI Boss wants to sequence all 109,000 rice accessions in genebank. Jeremy asks: “Then what?”
- Seeking C4 rice — and C3 sorghum. Good luck with that.
- Women grow food basket. In India.
Agrobiodiversity features in 2009 Development Marketplace awards
Our friend Ehsan Dulloo of Bioversity International is the frontman for a project that has just been selected as one of the winners of this year’s Development Marketplace awards.
A DM grant will enable Biodiversity International to protect the livelihoods of some 200 vulnerable women farmers, by providing access to seeds for locally-adapted varieties of crops. The project draws from gene banks, indigenous knowledge and farmer know-how, as well as traditional ways of adapting to climate variability.
There are several other agrobiodiversity projects among the winners. For example, “Peru’s Associación ANDES will support plant-breeding to increase diversity and production of nutritious potatoes and other tubers, improving health, incomes and quality of life for the community’s people.” And in the Philippines the “Trowel Development Foundation will replant mangroves and set up a value-chain system to fatten and market tie-crabs.” Well worth exploring the whole list. Congratulations to all.
Nibbles: Rice domestication, H5N1, Fisheries, Crop maps, Grafting, Livestock video, Perennial conference, Goat genetic patterns, Satellites, Large seeds, W4RA
- Dorian Fuller rounds up rice domestication latest.
- Deconstructing the persistence of H5N1.
- Artisanal fisheries and climate change don’t mix. No-take reserves, anyone?
- Mo’ better crop mapping.
- Multi-variety fruit trees for sale. Perfect Christmas gift.
- For your consideration: video on livestock science.
- First International Perennial Grain Breeding Workshop. Tell us about it, please!
- History of goat pastoralism. The revenge of geography.
- SciDev on remote sensing for drought and other disasters. IWMI presumably knows all about that.
- Boffins find seed size gene. Oregon State University Seed Laboratory doesn’t care.
- Web Alliance for Re-greening Africa. New one on me.
Nibbles: Climate, Fertilizers
- Sustainable Agriculture: The Unrecognized Key to Reversing Climate Change. Unrecognized by whom?
- Fred Pearce says: Cold turkey on nitrogen, now. It’s our only hope.
Oxfam goes to town on the Other Green Revolution
We’ve blogged briefly about how vast areas of the Sahel, far from degenerating, are actually experiencing something of an agricultural rebirth, thanks in some small measure to tree-planting. ((Skeptics may point to rainfall cycles; I’m not sure it matters.)) A post from Oxfam America summarizes some of those efforts, and explains that Oxfam brought some of the people responsible — elevated to eco-hero status — to Washington DC “for discussions with US legislators about local solutions to food insecurity and climate change.” We haven’t noticed any reports of those discussions, but are happy to draw attention to the high impact of local solutions to local problems, especially when they make use of agricultural biodiversity. Thanks to CAS-IP, which has an expanded gloss on Oxfam’s efforts.