Genebanks

February 28, 2014February 28, 2014

Rice diversity on display

Some great photos of the Genetic Resources Centre Annual Field Day over on IRRI’s Flickr site. IRRI’s breeders are invited to visit the genebank’s seed multiplication plots every year, to see if anything grabs their eye. The chessboard effect is due to sowing early and late varieties in an alternating pattern. I’m assured the contrast “is becoming more pronounced each year as the supporting data improve.” See for yourself by comparing with previous years.

IRRI genebank Field Day, 2004. Shared under a CC BY 2.0 license. — IRRI genebank Field Day, 2014. Shared under a CC BY 2.0 license.

February 28, 2014February 28, 2014

Nibbles: Frances Seymour, She don’t lie, PNG coffee, Rony Swennen, Corridors, Eating bugs, Potato breeding

Former CIFOR DG interviewed about Global Forest Watch and more. I would have asked why you can’t import your own data or share a map you make.
A particularly important place to watch the forest is Honduras, because deforestation there is correlated with cocaine trafficking.
Not clear from this World Bank piece if deforestation in PNG associated with cultivation of another drug, i.e. coffee.
Better bananas would be good for forests, wouldn’t they?
Bah, just let them have corridors, they’ll be fine.
And don’t forget to eat the forest bugs.
Ok, I can’t figure out how to fit the history of potato breeding into this narrative. Any of it organic, though?

February 25, 2014February 25, 2014

Nibbles: Plant Guardians, Peruvian Solanum, Sunflower genomics, California drought, Brazil drought, Sri Lankan tea, Minnesota wine, Seed of Hope, Sugarcane engineering, King Cotton, Rubber boom

Do you want to be a Plant Guardian?
Some people are already getting busy guarding Solanum in Peru.
The sunflower family gets a molecular makeover.
What the California drought means for food.
And the one in Brazil for coffee.
And tea in Sri Lanka is also in trouble, though for once drought is not to blame.
Minnesota has a wine industry thanks to wild relatives. But I won’t hold that against them.
In today’s Seeds of X story, X=hope and the place is Aceh.
If sugarcane was a cold-tolerant oil-producing crop, would it still be sugarcane?
Cotton has a lot to answer for. Or rather, the people who grew it do. Or did. Oh crap.
Rubber too. Though not as much. I guess. Oh crap.

February 24, 2014February 24, 2014

Nibbles: Sorghum beer, No beer, Malaysian rice, Soil diversity, World Food Prize, Photo prize

Brewery opens sorghum demonstration farm in Tanzania.
Maybe California’s barley barons need to get into sorghum.
Paddy Gene Bank nothing to do with Guinness.
I really dislike the US habit of calling soil dirt, even when that allows alliteration about diversity and dirt.
Who do you know worthy of the Word Food Prize?
And the prize for jolting a dead cliché back to life goes to CIAT, for this stunner: International Photo Competition ‘Forest-Agriculture Interface: Gender Lens’.

February 21, 2014February 21, 2014

Nibbles: Czech agrobiodiversity, Food Sovereignty reports, Forest Watch, Mexican corn, Youth

The Czech national genetic resources programme in a nice brochure.
Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue, by Patrick Mulvany. Another nice brochure. Not entirely clear why it’s not included in the Journal of Peasant Studies special edition on the relevant conference.
Forests can have Big Data too. Yes, it’s Global Forest Watch. And more from WRI, but it’s really all over the intertubes. No sign of the brochure. Yet.
“So when I eat this [corn] I eat with all the energy of my history.” No brochures needed.
Making agroforestry and agriculture in general attractive to yutes. Would a brochure help?