Category: Funding

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Nibbles: Yarsagumba, Chocolate meet & dig, Beer dig, Mapping disease, Mapping language, Going digital, Urban ag meet, Weird citrus, CGIAR genebanks and more, Microbiome

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It’s official: genebanks valuable

You may remember that back in the summer we blogged about a project to assign a monetary value to the Greek genebank. Well, although the project’s website says nothing about any results yet, a video has surfaced which does give some numbers. Here’s the money shot:

greece

And that’s just insurance value. Add to that productivity benefits (which unfortunately are not given in the film), and divide by what it costs to run the place (idem), and you find that “the comparison is favourable — the benefits far far exceed the costs, which means that having the genebank, investing in the genebank, maintaining and developing the genebank, is a desirable policy.” Well, that’s kinda expected, but it’s good to hear it from a Professor of Economic Theory and Policy. We all, I’m sure, look forward to seeing the spreadsheet. Because yeah, sure, money isn’t everything, but it does talk. Especially, these days, in Greece.

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TraitAbility and the Treaty

I don’t know enough about either vegetable breeding or intellectual property protection to venture a guess as to the significance to that industry of Syngenta’s new online effort to streamline the licensing of some of their varieties and associated enabling technologies, which they’re calling TraitAbility. I’m not even sure what success would look like, either for Syngenta or anybody else. Alexander Tokarz, Syngenta’s Head of Vegetables ((Not just Head of Lettuce, he is the first to point out.)) suggested at last week’s event accompanying the launch of the TraitAbility portal that he might well be happier if other companies were to follow suit with similar opening-up initiatives in the next couple of years than if he were to be inundated with e-licenses from day one. Full disclosure: I know that because I was there, at Syngenta’s invitation:

No word yet from either those other companies, potential licensees, or indeed growers. But nevermind all that. I still think TraitAbility may turn out to be quite important, for two related reasons. First, because it’s a clear parallel to the International Treaty, at least in the sense that — in albeit a smaller, more halting way, and at the other end of the variety development pipeline — it is ostensibly trying to make access to genetic diversity and technologies simpler and more transparent. Which suggests the intriguing possibility that the ITPGRFA, if it didn’t actually force anyone’s hand, at least in some way paved the way, or helped create the space, for what Syngenta at any rate is heralding as something of an innovation. And second, because, whether or not there was in fact such a causal link with the ITPGRFA, the parallel which is indubitably there might suggest to Syngenta that some of that license money should maybe flow back into conservation. Innovation is needed all along that pipeline to make it sustainable, not just at the business end.

LATER:

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Nibbles: Mashua info, Veggies programme, Rice research, Genomes!, Indian malnutrition, Forest map, British agrobiodiversity hero, GMO “debate”, Lactose tolerance, Beer

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Implementation of AnGR plan of action initiated

FAO has just announced that 13 projects, involving 30 countries, have been selected for funding as contributions to the implementation of 2007’s Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources. That’s thanks to the Governments of Germany, Norway and Switzerland, who put more than US$1 million in voluntary contributions into the appropriate FAO Trust Account, as per the Funding Strategy of the GPA. What are these projects? Well, it’s not all that easy to say. These are the directions FAO gives us:

Details of the projects are available here (scroll down to the map).

mapThe map in question is nice enough, and clicking on the country gives you lots of information on each project, but what I really wanted was just a list, giving titles and countries. And I couldn’t find that anywhere, though maybe I just didn’t look hard enough. With just that map, interactive and all, you get a good overall idea of geographic coverage, but it’s very difficult to figure out the range of livestock species involved in the projects, or how many are single-country as opposed to multi-country initiatives, for example. A pity.

Ah, but fear not, we’ve got you covered. Here’s the list you know you wanted but FAO wouldn’t let you have, going roughly from east to west, painstakingly extracted from that ever-so-pretty map.

  • Regional Project: Cook Islands, Fiji and Niue
    Title: South West Pacific Animal Genetic Resources Project — Conservation of indigenous pig and chicken breeds in Fiji, Niue and Cook Islands
  • Country: India
    Title: Documenting and supporting community-based conservation of four local breeds
  • Regional Project: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,
    Title: BushaLive (cattle)
  • Regional Project: Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda
    Title: Promotion of indigenous chicken for improved livelihood and income generation
  • Country: Mozambique
    Title: Conservation of native cattle breeds of Mozambique, for their present and future use
  • Country: Nigeria
    Title: Conserving the Muturu Breed of Cattle in South Rain Forest Zone of Nigeria
  • Country: Togo
    Title: Phenotypic and molecular characterization of local chicken in Togo
  • Regional Project: Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Senegal
    Title: Assessment of the impact of transhumance on the sustainable management of animal genetic resources
  • Regional Project: Algeria, Morocco
    Title: Preservation of Beni Guil sheep breed by semen exchanges between countries
  • Regional Project: Argentina, Brasil, Costa Rica
    Title: Enhancement of Farmers Communities through Goats Utilization and Genetic Improvement
  • Regional Project: Bolivia, Peru
    Title: Capacity strengthening for the implementing breeding strategies for llamas in Bolivia and Peru
  • Country: Uruguay
    Title: Caracterizacion productiva y conservacion en ovinos criollos de Uruguay
  • Country: Chile
    Title: Estrategias de conservacion in situ para bovinos y caprinos

Funny this coming hot on the heels of the launch of FAO’s monumental new data portal.