- A view from Papua New Guinea on a project to prepare PNG agriculture for climate change.
- How to grow a properly biodiverse pasture. Hint: money isn’t enough.
- Another Nagoya round-up. And another.
- Sesamum monographed.
- Award for CIMMYT genebank.
- African rice domestication deconstructed.
- Traditional practices bad for Nigerian children, good for Chinese fish.
Nibbles: Livestock system resilience, Nepal genebank, Salicornia, GMO risk
- ILRI slideshow on adapting South Asian livestock systems to climate change. And some background.
- Latest on Nepal’s new genebank.
- Salicornia 101.
- GENERA: a database of published, peer-reviewed scientific papers that are related to the risks and safety of genetic engineering in agriculture. Courtesy of Biofortified.
Did wild relatives get a boost at Nagoya?
I think I may have Nibbled the fact that IUCN released a few days ago at Nagoya the results of a massive study of the global pattern of threat to vertebrate diversity. Here’s the money map:
Also to coincide with Nagoya, IUCN collaborated with Kew and the Natural History Museum, London on a global analysis of extinction risk for the world’s plants.
And of course, the A-Z Guide of Areas of Biodiversity Importance was launched at a side event at COP 10. The press release is on the UNEP website.
Compare and contrast with this map Julian Ramirez of CIAT has kindly sent me, showing the richness of wild relatives of a dozen or more major crops. Question for anyone who was at Nagoya: were livestock and crop wild relatives discussed during the proceedings?
I ask because in a recent posting on the Crop Wild Relatives discussion group, Nigel Maxted suggests that launching an initiative to “(establish) … a Global Network of CWR Protected Areas is now a real priority, along with systematic ex situ conservation!”
So what happened?
Nibbles: Ethiopia, India, Japan, Netherlands
- Ethiopia rehabilitating more than 100 wheats and barleys in anticipation of climate change.
- MS Swaminathan Research Foundation makes images available.
- Minor delays on the road to Nagoya Protocol and CBD COP 12 in India.
- Placing ecosystems thinking at the heart of global food security. ILRI prepares for climate gabfest in The Hague.
Nibbles: Ethics, Seeds, Coconut, Nordic genebank
- Ethical Considerations in Agro-biodiversity Research, Collecting, and Use. In case you were thinking of doing some.
- Seed control ceded?
- “Scores of women from the rural households brought in finest homemade recipes on coconut.” My kind of conference.
- “Unique plant bank threatened,” says Google Translate of Nordic genebanks. Thanks Britta.