The Communications Team in the CGIAR Secretariat launched a new blog a few weeks ago called “Rural Climate Exchange: Connecting Agricultural and Environmental Science to the Climate Agenda.” It looks nice. It seems to have all the requisite bells and whistles. You can subscribe to an RSS feed or email notifications. We’ll be keeping an eye on it, and contributing as appropriate. Welcome to the blogosphere, Nathan, Danielle, Amelia et al.!
Nibbles: India, City chicks, Rooftop gardens, Black cherry, Prairie grasses, Oryza SNP
- ICRISAT recommends diversity to cope with climate change in India.
- US urban farmers “mad as wet hens“. City chicks?
- US urban farmers with a view to die for.
- CWR becomes nuisance when free of soil pathogen.
- Convicts help with germplasm regeneration and multiplication.
- The “gold-standard set of curated polymorphisms” for rice.
Keeping their heads – and crops – above water
The BBC has a multi-media feature from Bangladesh called “Life above the Floods.” It looks at how the people of Char Atra, a low-lying silt island in the middle of the Ganges, cope with the yearly ravages of the monsoon’s flooding. Which will no doubt get worse as sea levels rise due to global climate change. I hate to say it, but there’s really not much that agricultural biodiversity will be able to do to help these people adapt to the effects of a global 2 degree C increase in temperatures.
Nibbles: Traditional knowledge, Opium poppy, Fish, Bees, Earthworms, Wild horses, Camel, Fearl rabbits, Guinea savannah, Kava
- “In the face of climate change, keeping diverse, resilient ecosystems is one of the strongest tools for adaptation.”
- Getting high in Eden.
- Chinese ate freshwater fish 40,000 years ago.
- British MPs finish cleaning their moats, decide to save the honeybee.
- Worm power!
- LEISA 25:2 is out.
- Przewalski’s horse gets first ever reverse vasectomy.
- Early farmers used camel-drawn carts.
- Using Google Earth to map bunnies in Australia. And then kill them.
- Farming the savannah. What could go wrong?
- Stressed out? Try kava. With audio goodness.
Nibbles: Rice breeding, ICRISAT, Arkansas heirlooms, Rice domestication, Livestock products
- Oldest rice research facility in Western Hemisphere turns 100.
- ICRISAT DG plugs his genebank, says “India should start investing for the long-term sustainability of the farming sector particularly in dryland agriculture.”
- Seed-saving in Arkansas.
- The Archaeobotanist reviews rice domestication. And again.
- Nordics to discuss how to develop products based on local livestock breeds.