Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Bad news from our friends at AVRDC. The much-needed and still incomplete extension to their genebank has been badly damaged by fire. Fortunately, there were no injuries, and the seeds in the old coldrooms (below) are safe. But it will now be several more months before the new genebank can finally be commissioned. Anyway, commiserations to AVRDC’s genetic resources unit. But I know they’ll bounce back stronger than ever.
So there’s an Innovation for Biodiversity Photo Contest running over at Myoo Create, sponsored by National Geographic and UNEP. I voted for the picture of Svalbard, natch. Deadline for submitting entries is 30 May, for voting June 4.
Being very Web 2.0-savvy, our friends at the Crop Genebank Knowledge Base project have set up a YouTube channel. So now you can watch a couple of nice little videos on why genebanks are so important. And reflect on what really feeds people. Here’s a clue: it’s not genetic erosion numbers.
A short and barely comprehensible article in the People’s Daily Online alerts us to the fact that Beijing is to become a “seed-planting capital in the next few years,” on the back of its “currently reserved over 390,000 national-class germplasm resources, ranking second in the world.” Apart from what that means, I also wonder whether the planned planting programme will include potatoes, whose cultivation in China is apparently plagued by “inadequate germplasm resources for cultivar development, the lack of high quality seed potatoes” and various other problems.