- Our Hungry Planet: Agriculture, People and Food Security. Free online course from University of Reading.
- What if people in country X ate the same diet as people in country Y?
- The Man wants to fingerprint your stash.
- Or maybe fragrantly hopped beer is your poison?
- A new one on me: Conservatoire des Collections Végétales Spécialisées (CCVS).
- All politics is local. All control of forestry enterprises ought to be.
- Victoria takes to the poppy. Afghanistan unavailable for comment.
- The small farmers of Paraguay holding back the flood of soy. Or trying to.
- The promise — and curse — of CCN 51. And some context on the whole peak chocolate thing.
- Wait, some people think Bhut Jolokia is a cool name?
- The grapevine has gone viral. Millions of years ago.
- Global Panel of Wise Agricultural People says to biofortify your crops.
CGIAR to listen — again
There are “cross-cutting topics of global importance — women and youth; climate change; and capacity development — [that] will systematically strengthen and build coherence in research across all domains and Intermediate Development Outcomes (IDOs).” Should not conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity be one of these?
We posed that trenchant, though perhaps predictable, question last November, as CGIAR asked all and sundry for input on their new Strategy and Results Framework (SRF). Well, all and sundry have been heard, and the new version of the SRF is out. The answer to our question is, alas, no. The cross-cutting themes — now gender and youth, climate change, policies and institutions, and capacity development — still do not include agrobiodiversity.
But leaving it at that would be unfair. Remember that in the old SRF, as we pointed out last time, “use of genetic diversity … only contribute[s] to the reduced poverty outcome, and then only via increased agricultural productivity.” Here’s the chart to jog your memory, and sorry again for the poor quality. The sub-IDO in question is the one that breaks the symmetry of the left-hand column, click on the image to see it a bit better:
Here’s the new schema, thankfully now more legible:
Equally thankfully, conservation of genetic resources now contributes to the System Level Outcome of improved food and nutrition security for health, in addition to that of reduced poverty. See that little extra line going right and up from the IDO of increased productivity? That’s what a small victory, of sorts, looks like. And there are additional sub-IDOs that we can also get behind:
- Increased genetic diversity of agricultural and associated landscapes.
- Agricultural systems diversified and intensified in ways that protect soil and water.
- Optimized consumption of diverse nutrient-rich foods.
So I guess we can say that people saying things very much like those we say here have been heard, at least a little bit. Let the second round of consultations begin! The Consortium Board and then the Funders Council sign off on the SRF in March and April, respectively.
Celebrating the ICARDA genebank
More information on the ceremony for that award that the ICARDA genebank is to receive next month. It’s unclear to me from the invitation pamphlet to what extent the general public will be allowed in, but if you’re in Berlin on 19 March and would really like to go, my suggestion is to contact the Gregor Mendel Foundation and find out if they’ll let you register. You have until 4 March to do so. Looks like it’ll be quite a party.
Nibbles: History of beer, St Bridget, Gaulish bread, Ancient cocktails, PGR course, ECHO, Breakfast pix, Development vs biodiversity, Fairtrade African veggies, Indian medicinals, Phytoliths, CC adaptation
- I say ale, you say beer.
- Ireland has a patron saint of beer. Well of course it does.
- The bread of the Gauls was made from beer foam.
- Reviving ancient beers. Wait, what’s with all this beer today?
- Genetic Resources in Plant Breeding: Conservation, Characterization and Utilization, 17-28 August 2015, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Alnarp, Sweden: More detailed information on this course coming soon…
- Not that these guys in Florida need it.
- Pix of kids’ breakfasts from around the world.
- Development and biodiversity can coexist: here come the data.
- African leafy veggies have truly arrived, haven’t they, if they’re getting the Fairtrade treatment.
- But it might be too late for some medicinal plants.
- Phytoliths 101.
- What’s that you say? You want to integrate agrobiodiversity in your climate adaptation plans? Got just the thing for you.
Brainfood: Amorphophallus diversity, Physiological phenotyping, Jatropha diversity, Ass origins, Prickly lettuce diversity, Sugarcane in vitro, Pennisetum diversity, ABS and Norway, Seed storage behaviour, Barley diversity, Lentil diversity, Bilberry characterization, Potato genomics, Asian horse ABS
- Cytotaxonomic investigations to assess diversity and evolution in Amorphophallus Blume ex Decne. (Araceae). Out of 25 accessions and 7 wild species, “A. dubius may be the immediate ancestor of cultivated forms.”
- Physiological phenotyping of plants for crop improvement. High-throughput phenotyping is only the start.
- Geographic origin is not supported by the genetic variability found in a large living collection of Jatropha curcas with accessions from three continents. 900 global accessions fall into 2 genetic groups, but not related to geography.
- Genetic diversity of donkey populations from the putative centers of domestication. Sudan and/or Yemen.
- Genetic and Biochemical Evaluation of Natural Rubber from Eastern Washington Prickly Lettuce (Lactuca serriola L.). I look forward to seeing those rubber lettuce plantations.
- An approach on the in vitro maintenance of sugarcane with views for conservation and monitoring of plant nuclear DNA contents via flow cytometry. It’s possible to conserve sugarcane in vitro, but it won’t be straightforward.
- Geographical Gaps and Diversity in Deenanath Grass (Pennisetum pedicellatum Trin.) Germplasm Conserved at the ICRISAT Genebank. 194 provinces in 21 countries? That’s a lot of gaps.
- Realizing access and benefit sharing from use of genetic resources between diverging international regimes: the scope for leadership. As supplied by Norway, that is.
- Classification of seed storage behaviour of 67 Amazonian tree species. 1000-seed weight and seed moisture content at shedding are good, together, at predicting seed storage behaviour.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure in a Legacy Collection of Spring Barley Landraces Adapted to a Wide Range of Climates. 10 climatic clusters.
- Assessment of genetic variation within a global collection of lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) cultivars and landraces using SNP markers. Geographic pattern for commercial varieties, but not for landraces.
- Omne Ignotum pro Magnifico: characterization of commercial Bilberry extracts to fight adulteration. That would be Vaccinium myrtillus. You need to keep a sharp eye on the whole production process.
- The Contribution of the Solanaceae Coordinated Agricultural Project to Potato Breeding. It boils down to the Infinium 8303 Potato SNP Array, and it’s contribution to potato breeding has apparently been important.
- Horses as Sources of Proprietary Information: Commercialization, Conservation, and Compensation Pursuant to the Convention on Biological Diversity. You need a value chain with “a sequence of proprietary rights agreements governed and regulated by both tangible and intangible property regimes.” Well, yeah.