- Call for papers on Plant Ethics. Not just PICs and ABS.
- Today’s genebanks … Prairie Fruit in Saskatchewan, Canada, and
- something or other in Montenegro.
- Farmer savants explains why I couldn’t be bothered to link to the original loopy prognostifications.
3D trees in Google Earth
The latest version of Google Earth has 3D trees! Just a few cities’ parks, a couple of wild sites (rainforest, mangroves…) and a reforestation project for now, but surely more to come.
I look forward to seeing the world’s great field genebanks in 3D in due course, such as the coconut genebank in Ivory Coast or the Breadfruit Institute’s collection in Hawaii. And maybe eventually even smaller ones, such as this fruit collection I visited last week in Tajikistan.
But maybe we could start with Pavlovsk?
Crop Genebank Knowledge Base launched to not nearly enough fanfare
The Crop Genebank Knowledge Base (CGKB) is the first online resource for genebank managers and conservationists that provides easy access to crop specific knowledge and best practices for germplasm management and a vast collection of publications and training manuals in one place.
Agreed, it’s a great resource, and deserves to be much more widely known. It really impressed the staff of the Tajikistan national genebank when I demonstrated it to them during my visit last week. Too bad their internet connectivity is limited. Can all this stuff be put on a CD?
Genebanks all the more necessary in a 4°C+ world
As adaptation starts to come in from the, er, cold, a paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Series A looks at what a possible 4°C warming will mean for African agriculture. It isn’t pretty.
…maize production is projected to decline by 19 per cent and bean production by 47 per cent, all other things (such as area sown) being equal…
But the authors do have some ideas about what to do, policy-wise:
Thornton and colleagues highlight four areas for immediate policy attention: supporting farmers’ own risk-management strategies, strengthening basic data collection in agriculture, investing seriously in genebanks, and improving governance of food systems so that poor people can get affordable food.
This is what the authors say about genebanks in particular:
…concerted action is needed to maintain and exploit global stocks of crop germplasm and livestock genes. Preservation of genetic resources will have a key role to play in helping croppers and livestock keepers adapt to climate change and the shifts in disease prevalence and severity that may occur as a result. Genetic diversity is already being seriously affected by global change. Genetic erosion of crops has been mostly associated with the introduction of modern cultivars, and its continuing threat may be highest for crops for which there are currently no breeding programmes. Breeding efforts for such crops could thus be critically important. For livestock, about 16 per cent of the nearly 4000 breeds recorded in the twentieth century had become extinct by 2000, and a fifth of reported breeds are now classified as at risk. Using germplasm in SSA will need technical, economic and policy support. Revitalizing agricultural extension services, whether private or in the public sector, is key: no farmers will grow crops or raise livestock they do not know, are not able to sell, and are not used to eating.
Well, I find that a bit confused, in truth, but it is nice to see genebanks (and, incidentally, their databases) getting their due. They are all too often taken for granted. ((So too are extension services, of course, and it’s good to have them mentioned as well. But that’s another story.)) But well-run genebanks on their own are not enough, though they are definitely necessary. The material in them must also be easily accessible, and for that you need the sort of political infrastructure provided by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
Nibbles: Caucasus, Disease, Pork, Nepali genebank, Rare Breeds, Climate
- All hail the garden of agrobiodiversity that is the Southern Caucasus, says FAO.
- Paywalled Nature paper links biodiversity with disease spread — even in agriculture. Get it here.
- Roman pig yields the secrets of tasty pork — in about another 2000 years.
- Nepal’s genebank goes from strength to strength.
- Rare Breeds Survival Trust gets lifetime achievement award. Good to gnaw.
- “It’s high time the ancestral knowledge possessed by small farmers and indigenous people was appreciated at its true value.” Climate change edition.