- Boffins to rice: Pump it Up!
- Saving the nuts of Central Asia.
- Nepali women abandon hybrids for landraces and community seedbanks. Weird thing is that it’s a WWF project. But where are the extensionists? If only they had listened in Bhutan. Ok that packed a lot of links in there.
- Never saw an invasive I didn’t like.
- Architectural theorist tackles wine. Not many people hurt.
- Turns out 57 insect species can play host to that famous medicinal fungus that led to war between Tibetan communities a couple of years back. Which helps how?
- An envelope is opened at FAO.
- Seeds come to South Sudan. One hopes they are of the right kinds. And that somebody is collecting what was there before. Maybe someone should call WWF.
- You want vegetables with your fish?
- Crops for the Future says not all middlemen bad.
Home of the potato
Home of the potato, a set by PRI’s The World on Flickr.
Today’s PRI piece on how an old potato is helping Andean farmers cope with climate change also points to some fun spud photos (see above) which are in fact all of potatoes, unlike in the recent NatGeo disaster. And to a great video of CIP Director General Pamela Anderson eating chips (crisps), which she really shouldn’t do because they’re not very healthy (the chips, not the potatoes), but what the hell.
The fate of the global jute collection
I think a brief follow-up to yesterday’s foray down Memory Lane might be in order, lest you all go away thinking that I’ve lost my marbles. So, yes, according to Ramnath’s comment I was right, the large, global collection of jute assembled at the Bangladesh Jute Research Institute starting in the 70s did indeed receive a sort of blessing from IBPGR (the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources) in the late 1980s when it became part of the Global Network of Base Collections. It wasn’t on the list in 1985. But it had made it by the time of the IBPGR Annual report for 1989. I know that because googling threw up a link to the paper “Plant Genetic Resources Activities: International Perspective” by R.K Arora, R.S. Paroda and J.M.M. Engels, and that includes a handy table. Alas, that link, which should take one to Bioversity International’s (that’s what IBPGR became) website, is broken. Fortunately, the cache is there, at least for a while, and I have been able to save the paper as a pdf for you.
We don’t hear much about the Global Network of Base Collections any more. It would be interesting to know if the Bangladesh Jute Research Institute still feels itself to be part of it. I suspect not. Of course, things have changed a lot since 1989. But what’s to stop BJRI proposing to place its collection under Article 15 of the International Treaty on PGRFA? Others have…
And as for that IBPGR-funded collecting for Corchorus in Kenya that I could find no evidence of before, that must have been because I was searching for it incorrectly. My mole at the Collecting Missions Files Repository was able to identify it pretty quickly. 1 For the record, the missions took place in 1987-1988, under the leadership of I.R Denton of the International Jute Organization. And the material is still being used, as searching for that name in Google Scholar can tell you. But here’s how the source of material from those expeditions is being described in a fairly recent paper:
All the materials were obtained through the courtesy of the Director, Central Research Institute for Jute and Allied Fibers, Barrackpore, India, from the IJO world collection.
So people still recognize a “global jute collection,” but is it now located at the Central Research Institute for Jute and Allied Fibers, Barrackpore, India? Time for some further sleuthing, I guess.
Nibbles: Drought tolerance, Cassava pests, Sorghum beer, Frankincense, Permaculture in Asia, RDA
- “…drought-tolerant species are not necessarily following the general “stress-tolerator” syndrome.” Meaning?
- More on that cassava-problems-will-get-worse-with-climate-change thing from CIAT.
- More on that beer-will-save-East-African-agriculture-from-drought thing.
- Two of the Wise Men to rescue “poverty-stricken Ethiopian communities.”
- F. H. King’s Farmers of Forty Centuries or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan: The backstory. Via.
- Presenting South Korea’s genebank.
Nibbles: IRRI, Palestinian genebanks, Non-dairy ice-cream, Community genebanks, Goat racing, Millions Fed, Seed relief, Gametophytic incompatibilityd, Seed relief, Beer
- IRRI working to adapt rice to climate change, thanks to genebank.
- Palestine gets a genebank. And genebankers, thanks to ICARDA.
- Lupin ice-cream. Sounds yummie.
- Ethio Organic Seed Action “trains farmers in the use of traditional seeds.” I doubt it, but the stuff on community genebanks is nice.
- Goat racing in Uganda. Where are the photos?
- IFPRI publishes companion volume to Millions Fed.
- Vouching for seed vouchers.
- Breeding anti-GMO maize. Well, kinda.
- “Beer could provide lifeline for South Sudan’s small farmers.” I know how they feel.