- Modern Chinese agronomist praises ancient Chinese agriculture, possibly gets in trouble.
- Domesticating trees is still the next big thing.
- Transform agriculture for a greener economy, says SciDev.net.
- VoA on genebanks, including Svalbard.
- Gerbil enthusiasts tackle millets. Yes, gerbils.
Luigi speaks! A way out of genebank database hell?
There’s nothing like being associated with manifest power to pique the interest of mainstream media. And so it was when The White House, no less, hosted a breakfast on Innovation for Global Development. Announced at the breakfast was a new version of “the Germplasm Resources Information Network-Global (GRIN-Global), a powerful but easy-to-use, Internet-based information management system for the world’s plant genebanks”. Journalists who normally wouldn’t give GBDBH the time of day were suddenly queuing to explain why this was such a good thing. And among the people they queued for was the Global Crop Diversity Trust’s Luigi Guarino. Here’s the BBC World Service’s story. Luigi speaks at 1’21”
GRIN Global on the BBC World Service, Feb 18 2012
Suitably enlightened, forgive my cynicism when I wonder what prompted a web page about the International Crop Information System to suddenly bleep on my horizon-scanning radar. At first blush it looks like it does much the same job as GRIN-Global, but that can’t possibly be correct. It must do something slightly different — powerful, undoubtedly, but by the look of things not easy to use and not internet based — which I welcome in the name of diversity and the resilience that promotes.
Who should we thank for Wita 9?
A tweet by the FAO Media Center alerted us to a feel-good story about women and rice in Côte d’Ivoire. unfortunately, I couldn’t catch the name of the variety, but the folks at FAO explained it was something called WITA 9. That turns out to be an oldish (1998) Oryza sativa variety that’s been tested quite a bit in West Africa, for example in comparison to NERICAs. With a little help, I looked it up in IRRI’s germplasm management system (see its pedigree at the side) and it turns out that those Ivorian ladies have researchers in three CGIAR Centres (IRRI, CIAT and AfricaRice), germplasm from half a dozen countries and of course the IRRI genebank to thank for their new livelihood option.
Nibbles: Book, Nutrition, Etrogs, Horse in ancient Israel, Ocean access, Climate change, Mexican smallholders, Fruitpedia, Root crops meeting, Bayer wheat breeding, Old seeds, Viking barley, Cattle rock art, Safe meat & milk
- 1.24 kg of book about Biodiversity in Agriculture.
- Everybody’s already linked to The Economist on The Nutrition Puzzle but we’re not proud.
- And lots of people have linked to the biblical garden story; we’re proud to point out that one of the plants was a culturally important cultivated citrus.
- And while we’re in biblical mood, here’s a culturally important animal to go with that citrus.
- Biopirates plundering the oceans’ genetic resources must be stopped with international agreements, ‘cos that’ll work.
- Big session on Food security, climate change and climate variability at big scientific meeting. Eventually we’ll hear more.
- As when UK Chief Scientist tells Voice of America about agriculture and climate change.
- Small farmers in Mexico are making a difference to agrobiodiversity and politics.
- Fruitipedia! 433 fruits and counting.
- 16th Triennial Symposium of International Society for Tropical Root Crops in the works.
- Bayer CropScience buys into the Texas A&M University wheat genebank?
- Seeds survive in the permafrost. Good news for Svalbard.
- Seeds don’t survive in the permafrost. Bad news for Vikings?
- The connection between the the engravings found on ancient graves and current cattle brands in the same general area. Turkana, that is. Not much is the answer. Pity.
- And how did they make all that meat and milk safe for use, I hear you ask.
Prof. Clive Francis passes away
We unfortunately seem to be doing a lot of this lately. Dirk Enneking informs us on Facebook that Prof. Clive Francis, a famous Australian genetic resources scientist, has died. You can get an idea of his influence from a blog post by Ken Street dating back to 2008, but describing a situation that, alas, has not changed much. Sad to remember that one of the commenters to the post, my one-time collecting partner in Sicily Geoff Auricht, is also now deceased.