- 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.”
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.
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.
Banana improvement at IITA explained
IITA has uploaded to youtube a longish interview with renowned banana expert Prof. Ivan Buddenhagen of UC Davis. Lots of fascinating insights, both technical and historical. What for me was the money quote comes at the beginning of the second installment (of five). Asked about what direction banana improvement should take at IITA, he says: “The first thing is to get more germplasm.” Thanks to Jacob for the tip.
How fast will this climate change be anyway?
Well, in terms of distance along the Earth’s surface, about 400 m per year on average, ranging from 80 m per year in mountainous regions to 1.26 km per year in deserts. That’s according to a new paper in Nature by Loarie et al. ((Loarie, S., Duffy, P., Hamilton, H., Asner, G., Field, C., & Ackerly, D. (2009). The velocity of climate change Nature, 462 (7276), 1052-1055 DOI: 10.1038/nature08649)) Compare that with figures of postglacial migration rates of <100 m per year for some trees. Here’s a map of the speed of temperature change by biome from the Nature paper (click to enlarge).
And here’s the “persistence time” for protected areas in different biomes, i.e. the diameter of protected areas divided by the climate velocity.
The persistence time — which is how long it takes for the current climate to cross a protected area — exceeds 100 years for only about 8% of protected areas. And that, dear reader, is why we need protected areas that are larger and more connected. Oh, and genebanks.