- Our Nature Comment genebank paper used to both denigrate and promote GMOs. Must be doing something right.
- Same thing likely to happen with Fifth Assessment Report?
- SPC’s Land Resources Division new strategic plan. Good to see an important role for the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees.
- The future of teff. Two sides to every story. But does it feature in your breakfast?
- Biofortification conference off the ground.
- Urban protected areas: I wonder how many crop wild relatives are involved.
- Costa Rican ecosystems in trouble: I wonder how many crop wild relatives are involved.
Nibbles: Date palm protection, IPCC report, Israel flora, Horsham genebank, Jubrassic Park, Broomcorn millet origins, Synthetic yeast chromosome
- UAE date palms to get FAO recognition. So they’ll be ok then. Phew!
- Unlike African agriculture, according to the IPCC.
- Or Israel’s wild plants. Though what they intend to do about that is hidden behind a paywall. Can anyone tell me the answer?
- The Australians know what to do. Build a new genebank…
- …and grown ginarmous brassicas.
- Pat Heslop-Harrison for his part thinks we should collect more wild Panicum. And who are we to argue with him?
- Hey, worst comes to worst, we can always build our own beer yeast.
Nibbles: Fiji lab, World Economic Plants, USDA garlic, Breeding conference, Borlaug Summit, Alex Morrell, Hayden Flour
- Fiji commissions tissue culture lab to get clean planting materials out to farmers.
- World Economic Plants: A Standard Reference finally out. But farmers probably knew all about them already.
- Speaking of USDA, here’s what they do to conserve garlic.
- Big conference in the UK on Breeding Plants for the Future. Seems like there’s one of these every week these days.
- Like at CIMMYT, for example, in remembrance of Dr Norman Borlaug.
- “Our germplasm – our genetic base here – is the best in the world. We dominate genetics in the industry.” I’d like to meet a seed industry guy who didn’t say that.
- Meanwhile, in Arizona: “We’re not trying to go back in time, but capturing an authentic time.” I’d like to meet this guy. And put him together with the guy above.
More on TePuke rice in New Zealand
Attentive readers may remember a post from some years back about the return of TePuke rice from IRRI’s genebank to New Zealand. Via our friends at IRRI, here’s photographic proof from Tony Olsen, a local farmer, that he actually planted that variety at what would be a world record southern latitude for the crop (even further S than Rocha, in Uruguay)…
![5 Planting Rice 012[7]](https://agro.biodiver.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/5-Planting-Rice-0127.jpg)
…and that it actually grew, despite a not very sunny summer.
![7 Maturing[22]](https://agro.biodiver.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/7-Maturing22.jpg)
We wait to see whether there’s a decent harvest.
Incidentally, although IRRI was able to send Tony some seeds of TePuke, he says that:
A friend of mine helped me track down some TePuke Gold Rice seeds from the widow of the gentleman who supplied them to the NZ authorities that forwarded them to your institute in the 1970’s.
Which just goes to confirm that people really like holding on to their seeds.
Anyway, what with dire predictions about what will happen to rice yields in its Asian heartland, it might well be that places like New Zealand and Uruguay, now on the edge of the crop’s range, are going to feature much more prominently in the future. Maybe even parts of Japan, which has a young breed of farmers coming through who I’m sure are just itching to take on such upstarts.
Nibbles: Agavins, Women in Ag, Teacup shattered, Quinoa, Rice, PGR course, Seeds for Africa, Tomato, Global cookbook, Cover crops, Sheep
- Tequila plant is possible sweetener for diabetics. Talk about a waste of raw material.
- Would you Adam and Eve it? Women do not own 2% of the land. What next for the killer factcheck?
- In related news, teacup pigs are a fraud.
- Quinoa to feed the world, in Spanish.
- The rice warrior! Isn’t that overegging the pudding just a smidgen?
- Learn about plant genetic resources and seeds at Wageningen University.
- African Agriculture Technology Foundation “to avail adequate quality seeds at the right time and affordable price”. You might think some of the folks at the AATF should avail themselves of Wageningen’s course.
- Tough, flavoursome and bug resistant. Not Richard Markham, but a tomato bred specially for the Solomon Islands he’s talking about.
- Kew’s new global kitchen cookbook narrowly avoids being crushed by bandwagon trundling by.
- Cover crops are even more valuable than previously thought shock.
- Indigenous sheep breeds even more valuable than previously thought shock.