Genebanks

July 28, 2012July 26, 2012

Sudanese sorghum by the numbers

The Plant Genetic Resources Unit of the Agricultural Research Corporation (ARC) of Sudan has just published a catalog of its sorghum collection. It mainly contains reams of characterization data, which of course will be easier to explore in their digital form, but it’s always good to have illustrations to go with the numbers. Would be great to see the data eventually make their way to Genesys.

July 27, 2012July 31, 2012

Nibbles: Taxonomic search, Genebanks in China, USA, Nepal, Scaling up, Bison

Discover taxonomic names in files, websites, etc…
Chinese genebank collecting wild species in Tibet.
Touring a non-government genebank. And running another one.
Not a community one, though.
Everybody talking about scaling up. Here’s how you do it. Probably need the media involved, right?
Scaling up did for the bison.

July 26, 2012July 27, 2012

The CGIAR reform explained

Frank Rijsberman, CEO of the CGIAR Consortium, gave a seminar at IFPRI yesterday on the topic of the CGIAR reform. You can watch it below, but if you want to see the slides properly, you’ll have to go somewhere else. I wonder if there’s a way to intercut the video with still shots of the slides.

You may be intrigued by the statement that the CGIAR now has “15 (+1) programs.” The details are on the CGIAR Consortium and CGIAR Fund websites, though, confusingly, you get different sorts of details in the two places. Anyway, the research portfolio is perhaps most succinctly summarized here. The 15 things Dr Rijsberman referred to are the so-called CGIAR Research Programs (CRP). The “(+1)” refers to the “Long Term Support of CGIAR Genebanks,” ((I think.)) which is somewhat different, being described as a “CRP Research Support Program.” I’m not sure that it’s entirely appropriate to relegate what are often described as the crown jewels of the CGIAR system to a bracketed addendum, but we shouldn’t quibble. It’s certainly very good to see some of the world’s most important genebanks properly taken care of.

July 25, 2012November 28, 2017

Nibbles: Pollinator book, Museums, Quinoa and celiac disease, Plant growth analysis, Mangroves, Plant health

You’ve heard of alternative lifestyles? Now read all about alternative pollinators.
Why should we spend money digitizing natural history collections?
Not all quinoa cultivars may be good for celiacs.
The largest comparative growth experiment ever. Hope some of the 600+ species are crop wild relatives.
Mangroves trap heavy metals. And sequester a lot of carbon. But they are moving. Thank goodness there’s lots of ways to value the services they provide.
CABI’s Plantwise Knowledge Bank is online.
Kew boffins blow up coffee. The genus, settle down.

July 25, 2012

UK vegetable diversity safe

Readers with a long(ish) memory may remember some uncertainty a couple of years back over the future of the UK’s national collections of vegetable diversity at Wellesbourne. I’m glad to say the genebank is flourishing as part of Warwick University, with funding from Defra. It even has a Twitter feed, over which there is currently in course an interesting discussion of Cornish cauliflowers.