- AVRDC’s 30th International Vegetable Training Course Vegetables: From Seed to Table and Beyond.
- Cameron Peace’s excellent presentation on genomics and fruit genebanks at the recent PAG symposium organized by NPGS staff Chris Richards (Ft. Collins) and Clare Coyne (Pullman).
- Kew’s latest Samara newsletter does crop wild relatives.
- Exploring the need for specific measures for access and benefit-sharing of animal genetic resources for food and agriculture. Results of a workshop.
Agrobiodiversity conservation going mainstream?
I don’t know about you, but I’m surprised when, on the same day mind you, the Costa Rica News has a piece about a new citrus genebank at CATIE and Balkans.com an article about the genetic relationship between Turkish and Hungarian apricot cultivars. Pleasantly surprised.
An overlooked global public good
Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, is asking
donors to move away from the model of subsisidised fertilisers and seeds – which he calls “private goods”, to supporting “public goods” such as better infrastructure, strengthening local markets, ensuring access to credit and building storage capabilities.
Alas, I don’t think “storage capabilities” refers to genebanks here. No word on whether Prof. de Schutter would in fact include international crop germplasm collections in that list, but the World Bank certainly does.…
A new rice for Mozambique
Scidev.net has an interesting report on how breeders at IRRI and the Africa Rice Center, working with scientists and farmers in Mozambique, have developed a new variety of rice that offers almost six times the average yield and is more tolerant of diseases. The new variety is currently still known as IR80482-64-3-3-3 and has just entered Mozambique’s formal seed sector for bulking up and eventual supply to farmers.
That’s good news for Mozambique and farmers, although it isn’t the end of the story:
“For irrigated and rainfed lowland ecosystems we can produce rice varieties that combine high yield, resistance to major diseases and superior grain quality accepted by local and international markets,” said Surapong Sarkarung, an IRRI rice breeder based in Mozambique.
But he added that drawbacks could be: the low capacity of the seed sector to produce certified seed; lack of milling equipment to produce high standard milled rice and lack of credit to support farmers to buy inputs such as seed, fertilisers and machinery.
And of course we are duty bound to ask: will any effort be made to collect Mozambique’s existing varieties before the new variety sweeps them away? Or maybe that’s already been done.
Nibbles: Genebank, Rice, State of the World, Experiments, Lathyrus, Malaria and lactase persistence, Advice, CWR, Feed
- The Ethiopian Institute of Biodiversity has been up to something, but it is hard to be sure what.
- IRRI is also up to something — Green super rice — but again it is hard to be sure what. Not golden at any rate.
- CIAT picks its favourites from the State of the World 2011 report.
- More than anyone has any right to want to know about the history and future of agricultural experimentation, but fascinating nonetheless.
- The nutritive value and toxicity of grasspea and its relatives.
- Milk may or may not provide some protection from malaria.
- Nutrition advice, filtered for you. Jeremy sez “I like No. 6.”
- Irish launch crop wild relatives website.
- The feed quality of crop residues gets the treatment.