Genebanks

January 20, 2010January 20, 2010

Helping Haiti

Difficult to say anything new about what’s going on in Haiti. It is all sad beyond belief. WWF is rightly encouraging people to give. Seconded. UNEP has announced an environmental recovery effort. There’s no shortage of advice on what must be done. FAO is trying to raise money to support food production in fields and homegardens. The planting season starts in March, so time is short. Meanwhile, CABI’s blog looked at the underlying food security problems.

I haven’t come across any information on what’s happened to the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation Agricole (MARNDR), but I don’t hold out much hope. It housed the national germplasm collection of 513 beans and 54 maize accessions. SINGER lists 233 accessions from Haiti, almost all rice (48), beans (113) and maize (67). GRIN lists 111 (almost all rice, maize, cotton, beans). ((Thanks to Colin for descending into Genebank Database Hell.)) At first sight it seems that maybe most of the stuff that is in MARNDR should be findable elsewhere, though that’s quite a lot of beans.

LATER: IFPRI DG has his say too.

January 19, 2010January 20, 2010

Hari honoured

Dr Hari D Upadhyaya, head of the ICRISAT genebank, has just been honoured as a Fellow of the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA). Hari has done a huge amount of work on the theory and practice of core collections, among other things. Congratulations, Hari. Richly deserved.

January 15, 2010January 15, 2010

Nibbles: Cyanide, Pollinators, Artemisia, AnGR

More carbon dioxide means more cyanide in cassava, relative to protein. Will the good news never end?
Pollinators like diversity too.
Another day, another genome.
FAO surveys livestock conservation community “to evaluate the current status of existing national and multicountry conservation arrangements and reveal the possibilities for regional collaboration in the future.”

January 11, 2010January 12, 2010

Nibbles: Conferences, Banana satire, Green rice, Fairchild, Slippery cabbage

Advance notice of the IAALD 13th World Congress in Montpellier, France. Sounds like a blast.
Likewise for the Society for Economic Botany’s annual bash.
“Rabid banana consumption in the last 100 years has led to a precipitous increase in natural disasters.” Satire.
I’ve heard of green wheat to eat, but never green rice.
Protecting tropical trees from frost at a Florida botanic garden.
“Collecting germplasm is the first step in helping a nutritious island vegetable set seed.” Indeed it is.

January 11, 2010January 11, 2010

Zero-emission seed fridge gets a boost

A while ago I was snitty about the pitch for a zero-emission fridge to help farmers in Mozambique to store seeds, because it seemed to be saying that subsistence farmers didn’t know how to save or store their seeds. In the event the proposal did not win one of the World Bank’s Development Marketplace awards. Today’s Development Marketplace blog has good news. The European Commission Food Facility has granted Helvetas US$ 2 million “to establish 90 seed banks benefitting 38,000 families in 300 communities”.

I’m still not sure I fully understand the basis of the proposal, but if the EU gets it, then that’s probably just me. I think than the “fridge” is designed to store next season’s seeds in better condition that whatever techniques the farmers were using before, but there’s also something about helping the farmers “get through the ‘hunger period’,” which is being extended by changing climate. And that’s the bit I don’t get. Were farmers eating their seed stocks before? And how will better storage prevent them eating their seed stocks? Judging from the picture at the DM blog, 90 of those are not going to provide food for 38,000 families, but they might help to provide seed for planting.