Sorry about the light blogging recently: both Jeremy and I are travelling. But fear not, I for one am working hard for our readers, studying the local agricultural biodiversity. Why, just last night I spent some hours sampling agrobiodiversity products of both the avian and fermented liquid sort. And I am happy to report that both were highly acceptable. For the record, I’m at a meeting of a regional plant genetic resources network.
Too many early warning systems spoil the broth
The EU-funded operation will improve food security of more than 860 000 rural households, over 6 million people. The aim is to boost food production by making improved seeds available to needy farmers and to promote sustainable seed multiplication and certification.
Difficult to argue with the aim of this FAO project in Burkina Faso. One could perhaps offer alternatives as to the methods, but it is difficult to argue with the aim, and with the urgency of the situation. So the only observation I’ll offer — and not for the first time — is that it would be nice if projects of this kind also included a little bit of money for a rapid assessment of whether local landraces are adequately conserved ex situ in the national and international genebanks, and for their rescue collecting as necessary. FAO has a Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture which identifies problem situations such as that currently unfolding in Burkina Faso. But it also has a World Information and Early Warning System on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. One sometimes has to wonder whether the two talk to each other.
Save Pavlovsk!
Angry about what’s going on at Pavlovsk? Want to do something about it? The Global Crop Diversity Trust has a suggestion.
Pavlovsk Station finally in the news
You of course heard it here first, but the potentially tragic situation unfolding at VIR’s Pavlovsk Station has now made it into the pages of New Scientist. Let’s hope this has some effect.
The Iraqi Seed Project
You may remember our post a few months back about the heroic Mrs Sanaa Abdul Wahab Al-Sheikh and her efforts to save the Iraqi genebank. Well it seems that those efforts have attracted the attention of documentary film-maker Emma Piper-Burket and her team. I’ll be following their work, and really look forward to seeing the results of the project.