Category: Funding

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More on that new Turkish genebank

You may remember a post a few weeks back on a new genebank being planned by the Turkish government, about which I had some questions. Well, Agriculture & Rural Affairs Minister Mehmet Mehdi Eker will kick off building work on July 30. ((Actually the article says June 30 but its use of the future tense makes me think that’s a typo.)) In a statement, the Ministry said:

…we need to assess the current situation in order to protect our biological diversity and genetic sources. There are about 10 thousand plant species and nearly 3 thousand endemic plant species in Turkey. Also, Turkey is considered a center to find genes of a number of plant species which are of great importance for biological researches. Therefore, we decided to establish a seed gene bank in Turkey. The bank will contain genes of 250 thousand plant species.

I suppose that means 250,000 accessions. It sounds to me like this genebank may concentrate on wild species, unlike the one in Izmir. But I’m not sure. Maybe someone out there will give us more details.

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A fifty-year Farm Bill

When we nibbled an article from The Land Institute’s Stan Cox a couple of days ago it prompted a heartfelt outburst against the “holier than thou organic only everyting else be dammed mindset”. So I’m wondering what Anastasia and others will make of a Q&A in today’s Washington Post. Three of the wisest men in “alternative” agriculture in the US — Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry and Fred Kirschenmann — were in Washington to promote an alternative Farm Bill, one that takes a long-term view and that “values not only yields but also local ecosystems, healthy food and rural communities”. The Post took the opportunity to get some answers to pressing questions, such as “Washington doesn’t think in 50-year increments. How do you sell this?”.

Jackson: You sell it the same way as global warming or population growth. Washington thinks it’s going to deal with the global warming problem in 50 years? We will have this if we get cracking.

Kirschenmann: Because of our election cycles, you’re right. People tend to think in terms of two-year, four-year or six-year cycles. But I think the effort to deal with climate change is starting to change with that, because they know they can’t deal with climate change on that timeline. They have to extend the horizon. So we think the time is right to add agriculture to that.

I’d like to think they can do it, but I’m not optimistic.

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Senate discusses wild rice

Good news for wild rice breeders, from Washington, DC of all places.

Funding for wild rice and forestry research cleared a Senate committee hurdle last week, said U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, DFL-Minn.

The Senate Appropriations Committee last week approved $5.5 million in agriculture and economic development initiations that include new product research for wood and wild rice research.

A $300,000 appropriation would develop new and hardier strains of wild rice, Klobuchar said. It would fund research to tackle some of the most critical problems for wild rice producers, including shattering resistance, disease resistance, germplasm retention and seed storage.

Wild rice is the only cereal grain native to North America. Minnesota is the nation’s second-largest producer of wild rice, with production concentration near the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, the Democratic senator said.

I’d really like to have heard the august US Senators debate the ins and outs of that 300 large. Maybe one of them explained what “germplasm retention” is.