- Predators hunt for a balanced diet. So it’s not just people?
- Seeds of High Asia. Saudi Aramco World gives respect to the seed hunters.
- Obscure crops and an obscure book. Dorian Fuller gives respect to the neglected.
- “For the time being, I genuinely believe we must maintain yield growth, but we need to ensure that we preserve the natural capital for the future.” UK Food Security Czar speaks.
- Indian PM mea culpa on malnutrition. Will he listen to the above? Would it help?
- Beer in Ireland. Not Guinness. I may be gone some time.
- Nordics discuss AnGR and climate change. Successfully, natch.
- Prosecco runs to the IPR ramparts.
- Video on growing Artemisia to fight poverty.
- Help the CGIAR with its tagline. Beyond irony.
Nibbles: Whiskey, Project design, Australian genebanks, Gender, Books, FAO DG Q&A
- Meet my two best friends, Jack and Daniel.
- How to design sustainable intensification projects.
- All about the Aussie PGR “system.” What’s that you say? They need another genebank?
- I just know you want to go to the Global Conference on Women in Agriculture.
- If that doesn’t grab you, perhaps Denver Botanic Garden’s series of booktalks will. Tea & sushi, anyone?
- New FAO DG pushes all right buttons except for agrobiodiversity. Which is left for others at FAO to push.
Erna Bennett RIP
Erna Bennett has died. She was a pioneer of plant genetic resources conservation. In fact, according to Pat Mooney, “it was this colourful, outspoken Ulster-born Irish revolutionary who first coined the phrase ‘genetic conservation’ and brought substance and strategy to the term for the world community”. You can get some idea of what she meant personally to workers in the field by reading the comments on the announcement of her death, and also on a previous post, on Danny’s blog. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution dedicated an issue to her on the occasion of the 80th birthday. Here’s what Jack Hawkes, another pioneer in the field who recently passed away, thought of her and the other handful of far-sighted people who we have to thank for today’s genebanks, and the treasures they hold.
Nibbles: Sunflower breeding, Indian cows, New varieties and income, Climate change and extinction, Honeybee threat, Figs, Apple history, DIY Luffa, IRRI DDG blog
- The Russian sunflowers are coming! The Russian sunflowers are coming!
- Holy cow! Can’t do better than The Hindu’s headline. And more.
- CIMMYT says groundnut varieties good for income. ICRISAT unavailable for comment.
- But are they climate-proof?
- Because it could be worse than we thought for many species. And more. And what it means for in situ.
- The latest on what’s killing bees.
- The fig, in all its recondite glory.
- Apples of France, Part Deux.
- All you ever wanted to know about growing your own luffa.
- IRRI DDG tries his hand at growing a rice crop. And blogs about it to boot. A nice idea, which should be widely emulated in the CG.
A new year dawns for the British apple
The famous British apple collection at Brogdale in Kent, which has been through some vicissitudes this past year, and could do with some good news, is being replanted, and the BBC has a video. Incidentally, I recently learned that the composer Gerald Finzi assembled a selection of heirloom varieties at his country house, Church Farm, Ashmansworth, near Newbury, Berkshire, and that these are included in the national collection at Brogdale, or at least they were. I hope they still are, because Church Farm has been on the market and who knows if the new owner is interested in the likes of Russet, Roxbury Russet, Welford Park Nonsuch, Baxter’s Pearmain, Golden Non Pareil, Mead’s Broading, Norman’s Pippin and Haggerstone Pippin.