Climate change

March 15, 2009November 25, 2021

Submergence resistant rice on the airwaves

“It was not in use,” said Pamela Ronald. “Very, very low yield and very poor flavor, so no one was eating it. It’s really more like a grassy weed, but it had these properties.”

“It” is a rice from eastern India which was known ((By farmers, the article says. But then Dr Ronald says it was not in use. Was it information recorded by a conscientious germplasm collector?)) to survive under water. Listen on VOA to how Pamela Roland identified the sub gene in this variety and then introduced it into the popular Swarna.

“We wanted to hear what kind of difference it made to their families, and a couple of the women told me that they were able to feed their families and they had extra rice to sell, which is really important in those areas to bring in a little cash,” said Pamela Ronald.

March 13, 2009March 14, 2009

Agriculture blogged in Copenhagen

Climate Feedback is a blog hosted by Nature Reports: Climate Change to facilitate lively and informative discussion on the science and wider implications of global warming.

There’s not a huge amount on agriculture normally, but a post yesterday from the Copenhagen conference mentions not one but two people whose (independent) work on the effect of climate change on agriculture we’ve mentioned a number of times, Marshall Burke from Stanford and Andy Jarvis from Bioversity International.

March 13, 2009

Nibbles: Venezuela, Bangladesh, Climate change, Geographic indications, Dried herbs, Maize, Cydonia, Snakes, Hawaii, Pinot passion

“For some, eating out at an arepa place is turning into a luxury.” Go Chavez!
“Two farmer families live adjacent with one another. One has a good quality mango tree and other one has same as a jackfruit tree.” Discuss.
“Ex situ conservation in genebanks must expand dramatically.”
“…the question concerns how [geographic indication] could help develop commercial food crop growing, fix agricultural and food know-how, ensure food security in rural areas, and alleviate poverty.” That indeed is the question.
“Il profumo dell’origano di Sicilia rimane integro sino allo sbriciolamento.” I would hope so!
Purple maize used to make dyes. What’s wrong with just eating the damn stuff?
“…it was probably a quince and not an apple or Cheeto that Adam tempted Eve with.”
Farming snakes in Thailand.
“Instead of being a source of health and well-being for the land and people, the American system of industrial agriculture has become a source of problematic food and even fear.” Via.
“Pinot Noir first came to America … in the middle years of the 19th century.”

March 12, 2009March 12, 2009

Help for coffee farmers in Central America

From Andy Jarvis:

What if major coffee regions in Latin America were to disappear altogether in the next generation? What would that mean for you as a consumer? Or your children? And what about coffee farmers in Latin America? And their children? What will they do if their livelihoods disappear? At CIAT (International Center for Tropical Agriculture), we have been working for years to develop crop targeting tools based on climate scenarios that show how climate change could alter production systems throughout the region in the years to come. We propose to expand our work to generate a range of possible scenarios for changing patterns of land use in Mexico and Central America, and to partner with CRS (Catholic Relief Services) to help coffee farmers develop strategies to more effectively mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change under each one. In collaboration with CRS, we can directly impact 7000 farmers and generate learning that helps hundreds of thousands more.

Like the idea? Then vote for it!

March 11, 2009March 11, 2009

Partially relevant nominative determinism

Not strictly relevant to our self-imposed beat, of course, but as it already gave my compadre Luigi a quick post I feel I ought to share …

There’s a strange phenomenon (in whose origin, I freely admit, I had some impact) called nominative determinism. Briefly, your name suits your job and, of course, vice versa. Thus Lord Brain was an eminent neurologist before he was ennobled. So at a talk this morning on wise management of water resources, I perked up when I saw that the crucial research on partial rootzone drying was by a man called Peter Dry. Luigi was good enough to check the reference, and indeed, Hormonal changes induced by partial rootzone drying of irrigated grapevine exists and Dry is one of the authors.

All fun aside, it is a valuable technique for reducing water use by up to 50% while still maintaining good grape production and, apparently, a pretty drinkable vintage. No word though of whether the wine was a tad brut too.