Genebanks

December 17, 2011August 7, 2015

Where Burundi’s new rice comes from

Farmers in Burundi will soon sow the seeds of hard work and international cooperation with the release of two new rice varieties set to boost rice production and meet the rapidly growing demand for rice in Burundi.

Want to know how hard was the work? And how international? All you have to do is type “IR77713” into IRRI’s International Rice Information System. After some fiddling, you’ll get the following pedigree, which you’ll definitely need to click on to read properly. Remember that wherever you see IRGC or the TT Chang Genetic Resources Center mentioned that means the material came from the IRRI genebank.

And that, dear reader, is why a multilateral system for access and benefit sharing is such a good idea.

One of the farmers who helped pick the new varieties, Ms. Scolastique Simbandumwe, shared, “I am happy that the varieties I selected are now released. I would like to get seeds now, to be among those who will multiply seeds, so that my income can increase.”

Not to mention genebanks.

“We congratulate IRRI for this achievement,” concluded Director General of Agriculture Sebastien Ndikumagenge, Burundi Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock. “By releasing these two varieties, IRRI contributes a lot to our efforts to find food for Burundians. We encourage IRRI to go forward.”

December 15, 2011January 15, 2014

Nibbles: Law book, Sheep breeding, Pig breeding, Pink mushrooms, Coconut genome, Cassava genome, Apples in the Big Apple, Street food, Irish corner, Peach palm tissue culture, Seed saving, Kenyan farmers, First farmers, Tenure, Peppermint facts, Mountains, Taro network, Shea

Juliana Santilli guest-blogs on the book Agrobiodiversity and the Law over at Agrobiodiversity Grapevine.
ICARDA tells communities how to set up a sheep breeding programme.
While an Indian institute breeds pigs, with Canadian help.
Another Indian institute does the same for mushrooms, with no help.
And yet another sequences the coconut genome.
While BGI sequences a whole bunch of CIAT cassava stuff. Only yesterday they were doing rice. Yeah, but only 50, and you gotta keep those sequencers going, don’t you? Would be nice to know how much the CGIAR is paying BGI annually. Do they get frequent flyer miles? Have they negotiated a corporate rate?
A Kazakhstan apple tree grows on the East River. A forest, actually. If it had been in England, it might eventually feature here. Ok, ok, our quest for connections is occasionally overdone. Made you look, though.
Ah, kimchi! Ah, fish empanadas! So much interesting food, only one stomach lining…
Danny tells us about Ireland’s CWR database. In other news, Ireland has CWR. Oh, and then he goes crazy on the Biodiversity for Nutrition mailing list. Did he get his goat is what I want to know.
AoB on in vitro peach palms. Why read the paper, when AoB abstracts the abstract?
Bifurcated Carrots on seed saving in Canada. Video goodness galore.
And while we’re talking cinema, here’s news of a movie on a year in the life of four Kenyan farmers.
From Kenyan farmers to First Farmers. The Womb of Nations. I like that. And more. Agricultural hearths. I like that too.
Four days of discussion about land tenure. May not be enough, actually.
“…70 per cent of the peppermint sold in the US is descended from a mutant in a neutron-irradiated source.” Good to know.
I missed International Mountains Day. Again.
That EU-funded taro mega-project from a PNG perspective.
What I like about this Worldwatch series on neglected plants is that they’re not factsheets. Yet.

December 14, 2011December 14, 2011

Illustrating genebanks

A few days ago Daniel Mietchen over at Wikimedian in Residence asked the question How would you illustrate the concept of a seedbank? Well, how would you? This is my idea:

December 14, 2011December 14, 2011

Nibbles: Bees and climate change, Native American seeds and health, Sustainable harvesting and cultivation, Tree death, Grass and C, Vegetables, Fishmeal, Big Milk

Today: Connections Edition, in which we pick low-hanging fruit, think outside the box, and join up the dots.

The return of a US bumblebee. Is it due to climate change?
“These foods have meaning” for a Native American tribe (and for Africans for that matter). So will they be able to check out their seeds? And sequence the hell out of them, like rice?
If you want to harvest palm heart sustainably in the Colombian Andes, only take 10% of any population a year. Is cultivation an option?
Trees are dying in the Sahel. And yet boffins don’t know how to kill them. No word on what the grass is doing.
Vegetables and nutrition: the theory and the practice. Of course, a lot of them are grown in cities.
Why is so much fish made into fishmeal rather than eaten? Location, location, location. Of markets, that is. Kind of like for milk.

December 7, 2011

Talking about FIGS

We’ve blogged here once or twice before about Focused Identification of Germplasm (FIGS). This is a GIS-based strategy pioneered at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas for choosing genebank accessions based on where they were collected, which in many cases seems to yields a significantly improved chance of landing the trait you want. Well, a new paper is out applying the method successfully to wheat stem rust resistance. But a press release on the ICARDA blog also tells us that “the FIGS team is now launching an international consultation to help spread this practice among the global scientific community, and to learn together to further improve the FIGS tool.” If you want to join in, contact Ken Street (k.street AT cgiar.org) at ICARDA.