Genebanks

June 25, 2014June 26, 2014

Good times for Seeds of Time

We somehow missed the news that Seeds of Time, Sandy McCloud‘s documentary about pioneering seed saver Cary Fowler, had won the Audience Award at the San Francisco Green Film Festival. Congratulations to all concerned. Here’s the trailer. Hope it comes your way.

Coincidentally, Prof. Brian Cox has been filming for the BBC up at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault this week.

Fascinating day filming at the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard – the world's seeds, stored for thousands of years! http://t.co/fIoPNWujVf

— Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) June 25, 2014

June 25, 2014June 25, 2014

Not so boring Bonn

A nice evening yesterday listening to a great talk by Dr Ola Westengen of NordGen on the importance of global efforts to conserve crop diversity, and in particular the role of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. That was followed by a reception in a very pleasant space in the Mediterranean section of the botanic garden of the University of Bonn. But not before a tour of the economic plants collection, which is across the road from the main grounds of the botanic garden. Well worth a visit if you’re ever in Bonn. Perhaps unusually, this botanic garden has a long history of interest in the study and conservation of crop diversity. For example, Friedrich August Koernicke, who worked there in the middle of the 19th century, made a famous collection of local cereal landraces. A little genebank is being developed for long-term seed storage, which should be ready by the end of the summer.

June 24, 2014

Nibbles: WHS, Cultural identity, Agrobiodiversity monitoring, Mango genebank, Coconut genebank

New UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including some vaguely agricultural ones.
Why more of those would make sense.
Though monitoring would be a challenge.
Could put it all in genebanks, like these mangoes in India.
But that’s hard too, just ask this coconut genebank curator in PNG.

June 20, 2014

Nibbles: Agave pollination, Sanjaya Rajaram, PGR policy history, Ex situ conifers, Botanic garden theft, Kyrgyz forests, Home nurseries, American chestnut, South Pacific action

Tequila and bats. Two of my favourite things.
Continuing the Mexican theme, we have a World Food Prize 2014 winner.
I wonder what he thinks of the changes he’s seen during his illustrious career in the international system for PGR conservation and use.
I bet there’s a few endangered conifers, and maybe some ex situ collections, in Mexico.
I hope there weren’t any among the plants stolen from the RBG Edinburgh recently.
But perhaps there were some fruits and nuts from Kyrgyzstan?
Well, the way to go is home nurseries, clearly.
Maybe even with the GM chestnut, why not?
Meanwhile, in the South Pacific, CePaCT has been really busy.

June 20, 2014June 20, 2014

Pisum phylogeny illustrated in really cool way

Yeah, sure, you can publish your Pisum phylogenetic tree the usual way:

But isn’t it a whole lot better to do it like this?

That’s the author, Mike Ambrose of the John Innes Centre Germplasm Resources Unit showing off his handiwork. Thanks to Nora Castañeda for the photo. It’s all happening because of the PGRSecure conference in Cambridge, UK. which you can follow on Twitter.

LATER: And thanks to Jim Croft for pointing out something similar from Down Under.