Category: Featured

Mike Listman revives the discussion on Pawnee corn:

A colleague at CIMMYT has suggested a possible linkage with Mexican native maize varieties, more of the tropical rather than temperate corn belt type (possibly why the Pawnee materials might not have prospered at Oklahoma day-lengths…) You could possibly confirm the Aztec-Pawnee linkage through a quick comparative assay of the Pawnee language and Nahuatl, focusing on vocabulary for everyday objects and activities (obviously, those that would have existed in pre-Colombian times).

Dag lengthens the list of genebanks in some kind of trouble.

Also the Nordic Genetic Resources Center (NordGen, formerly the Nordic Gene Bank, NGB) face a thrilling end of the year balance this year. Even after heavy cuts in the operational costs during 2010 (and 2009) the genebank does not expect to be able to meet the budget for the end of the year financial status.

Where will it end?

Nigel sort of agrees with Dave on the usefulness of protected areas:

Dave is interestingly provocative and I have a lot of sympathy with his frustration which I at least in part share!

But you just know there’s a “but…” coming up. And indeed there is. In spades. Read the whole thing. Then have your say.

Oh, and there’s more on this discussion here, from Danny and Jeremy.

Peter Matthews attempts to mediate between agriculture and nature:

I think if the nature-conservation ethic could extend further into agricultural landscapes, then there would be more room to extend the development-ethic into natural landscapes. Lets say 20% for nature, 60% for nature and us, and 20% just for us? What are we aiming for, if we have any aims?

So, let’s all hear it for the Satoyama Initiative and “socio-ecological production landscapes”?

Our innocuous post on genetic erosion in Georgia elicits consternation from Dirk at the lack of proper reference to previous work, support from Eliseu by analogy with a similar study in Portugal, and the usual diatribe from Luigi about the level of discourse on genetic erosion. But really, it was all about the threshing board.