- Why don’t genebanks count as natural history collections?
- Saving The Old Apple Tree. That would be as opposed to any old apple tree.
- “If the indigenous seeds are important enough for scientists to fight to preserve in a seed vault deep in the belly of a mountain in Norway, would it not make sense to ensure these seeds survive within their own environments?” Good question from Uganda.
- Council on Bioethics says “Biofuel policies are unethical”. Here’s the Press Release.
- Local women’s quinoa cookbook (in Spanish) wins prize (in France). We’re calling it quinoa, not quinua, because we want people to find us.
- CARE cares about climate change and food security.
A coconut impostor unmasked
Are you one of those that gets upset when a film-maker, say, tries to get one part of the world to stand in for another without giving a thought to the possibility that the respective floras might be entirely different? I’m afraid I am, and many a movie supposedly set in Africa, for example, has been spoiled for me when I realized, by looking at the plants, that it was filmed in Hawaii or Costa Rica.
Roland Bourdeix has the same problem, if the recent exchange on the Cococnut Google Group is anything to go by.
Roland received the following postcard from Guadeloupe.
Fair enough for most people, but being the coconut expert he is, Roland immediately realized that the photograph depicted Tahiti Red Dwarf (also called Rangiroa Red Dwarf or Haari Papua). Problem is, that variety is not recorded from Guadeloupe. So, either it has been very recently introduced, or, more probably, according to Roland, the postcard company simply used a picture of a coconut from another country, perhaps French Polynesia, and passed it off as being from Guadeloupe. And nearly got away with it…
Brainfood: Brazil nut, Cassava relatives, Botanic gardens, Pollinators, OECD, IPM, Community genetics, Insect resistance, Marco Polo sheep, Abiotic stresses, Better climate change modelling
- Made in Brazil? Brazil Nut, yes. The genus Manihot, not so much.
- The role of botanic gardens as resource and introduction centres in the face of global change. They have one. But they need to be more like genebanks.
- Global growth and stability of agricultural yield decrease with pollinator dependence. Analysis of time-series FAO production data shows that more pollinator-dependent crops have lower yield growth and lower yield stability. So both should benefit from more active management of wild pollinators and their habitats. Results can be extended to other ecosystem services but that was a bridge too far for this reader.
- Draft Policy Framework for Investment in Agriculture. “The purpose of this document is … to initiate discussion.” Off you go.
- Deterrent and insecticidal properties of bean seed (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) whole meal or protein extract incorporated into the diet of Callosobruchus maculatus (F.) (Coleoptera: Bruchidae). To protect chickpeas from bruchid beetles, add bean proteins.
- Community genetics: at the crossroads of ecology and evolutionary genetics, a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, which includes …
- … Insect-resistant biotech crops and their impacts on beneficial arthropods. The abstract gives nothing away: “The findings … are discussed.”
- High connectivity among argali sheep from Afghanistan and adjacent countries means you need international collaboration for conservation. Good luck with that.
- Better phenomics and genomics means you can do really cool Genetic analysis of abiotic stress tolerance in crops, and their wild relatives of course. But we knew that.
- Five ways of Improving assessment and modelling of climate change impacts on global terrestrial biodiversity: more data, process-based modelling, better understanding of role of community interactions and of the effect of genetic variation, and better functional groupings of species for improved simulations of vegetation distribution.
The CATIE peach palm collection
It’s been in the news recently…
Nibbles: Yemen, Squabs, Chilies, Questions, Impact Assessment, Huckleberry, Cacao, Filipino rice genebank
- Yemen saves local varieties, adapts local agriculture.
- Not all small livestock enterprises guarantee success. Beware.
- Hot new book: Chasing Chilies.
- Another list of really important questions. Answers? Can’t get the original, yet.
- New World Bank blog on impact assessment. Assess this.
- In the market for huckleberry market information?
- CocoaLink off the ground. Maybe not in Cote d’Ivoire yet, though, alas.
- PhilRice genebank in the Philnews.