- Some heirloom tomatoes resist late blight, others not so much.
- Overweight or obese Americans at 68%, and holding steady. No epidemic, say free-thinkers.
- “No wonder kids are gaining weight.” But they aren’t, see above. (Where’s that sarc-mark when you need it?)
- Hydroelectric scheme to save Ifugao rice terraces, cut carbon emissions. W-w-w?
- Climate Change and Agrobiodiversity updates us on hot policy news. Thanks.
- IFAP updates its farmers on agricultural biodiversity. Thanks again.
- Small oats genebank evaluations make big progress with young crofters.
- Yam festivities in the Philippines.
- Psst, you want drought insurance for your camel herd? Oh, and Jeremy wants to know why this IFPRI stuff didn’t find its way into the story.
- “The ability to roam freely enables people and animals to exploit or avoid a wide range of natural and manmade habitats.” Still no cure for cancer.
- Barley helps wheat. But how, exactly? I think we should be told.
- Fiji sets up breadfruit genebank Which will hopefully help local agricultural entrepreneurs.
- Anastasia on introgression. At length.
- The biggest urban farm in Europe.
- A bite of Cheese(monger).
- Coconuts bad for birds bad for soil bad for plants bad for crabs. Ok then, let’s cut the damn things down, shall we?
- Cockney cuisine takes a turn for the worse. Well would you Adam and Eve it?
- Egyptian cat temple pix. Miaow.
- “…the first biofuel crop breeding programs for low-input systems are likely to accelerate progress by focusing on grass–legume bicultures.”
- And another from the Land Institute: “…harvested perennial
grasslands provide valuable ecological benchmarks for agricultural sustainability.”
Helping Haiti
Difficult to say anything new about what’s going on in Haiti. It is all sad beyond belief. WWF is rightly encouraging people to give. Seconded. UNEP has announced an environmental recovery effort. There’s no shortage of advice on what must be done. FAO is trying to raise money to support food production in fields and homegardens. The planting season starts in March, so time is short. Meanwhile, CABI’s blog looked at the underlying food security problems.
I haven’t come across any information on what’s happened to the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation Agricole (MARNDR), but I don’t hold out much hope. It housed the national germplasm collection of 513 beans and 54 maize accessions. SINGER lists 233 accessions from Haiti, almost all rice (48), beans (113) and maize (67). GRIN lists 111 (almost all rice, maize, cotton, beans). ((Thanks to Colin for descending into Genebank Database Hell.)) At first sight it seems that maybe most of the stuff that is in MARNDR should be findable elsewhere, though that’s quite a lot of beans.
LATER: IFPRI DG has his say too.
Nibbles: Pastoralists, Millennium Village, African agriculture
- “The film showcases Bio-Cultural Protocols highlighting the Raika community of Rajasthan and the Samburu of Kenya. Developing Biocultural Protocols is an important means of implementing both paragraph 8j of the CBD and Strategic Priority 6 of the Global Plan of Action on Animal Genetic Resources.”
- How Ethiopia’s Millennium Village is doing.
- And along the same lines, what Pedro Sanchez has to say about African agriculture and that green revolution nit needs to have.
Nibbles: Vavilov on couscous, Molecular studentships, Goat genetics, Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Sweet potato, New Agriculturist, Vietnam and CC, Liberian ag research, Cuisine
- Couscous deconstructed.
- China and Bioversity collaborate on molecular marker training.
- Neolithic legging helps unravel the history of the goat in Europe.
- Dag’s cool Svalbard pix.
- CIP launches Sweetpotato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA).
- The new New Agriculturist does markets.
- Climate change and rice cultivation in the Mekong Delta.
- The perils of agricultural research in Liberia: one trial up in smoke, another stolen. Bummer.
- Ok, I had no idea there was a Tasting Cultures Foundation. Thanks, Facebook.
Here we go again: UK genebank threatened
Prospect, a “union for professionals” in the UK reports that the University of Warwick plans to close HRI Wellesbourne, home of a Genetic Resources Unit that is effectively the vegetable genebank for the UK. None of the reports I’ve seen mentions the genebank specifically, and it is only one aspect of HRI’s activities that will be sorely missed if it is discontinued.
The debacle has not yet made it into the mainstream press — unlike the flap over the apple collection at Brogdale, with it’s right royal connections — although I happen to know that HRH Prince Charles has received seeds from HRI, whether he knows it or not. Nor is the genebank mentioned in any of the specialized reports I’ve seen. But this is the place that holds the bulk of the UK’s vegetable seed diversity, old and new, and that was established at least in part in response to the perceived genetic erosion taking place as the UK signed up for EU legislation on seeds. I believe the idea was first mooted by Lawrence Hills, who also founded the Henry Doubleday Research Association. ((Where I worked for a time.)) The Ministry of Agriculture bought the idea but not the originator, placing the genebank instead at Wellesbourne, a few miles from where the HDRA eventually came to have its headquarters.
What now? The UK Government doesn’t seem to have said anything publicly, and its funding for HRI Wellesbourne is set to fall from GBP 5 million annually to just GBP 200,000 by 2012, one probably reason why the University is seeking to close the place. I can’t see a White Knight coming to the rescue this time, not for a bunch of vegetables. We can but watch and wait.