- Our friends at the Global Crop Diversity Trust have been busy:
- “Experts: Failure to focus on farming will undermine global climate agreement and increase hunger.” Er … what agreement?
- Oh, and we need more money, please.
- Tomorrow, US Congress briefed on soil microbiology and Vitis fermentation products, aka terroir.
- IRRI Boss wants to sequence all 109,000 rice accessions in genebank. Jeremy asks: “Then what?”
- Seeking C4 rice — and C3 sorghum. Good luck with that.
- Women grow food basket. In India.
World Food Summit calls for crop diversity conservation
The World Food Summit adopted a resolution yesterday. Some immediately called it “toothless,” but it does contain this welcome call for the conservation and use of agrobiodiversity.
Any recipe for confronting the challenges of climate change must allow for mitigation options and a firm commitment to the adaptation of agriculture, including through conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources for food and agriculture.
I wonder to what extent the delegates were swayed by Libya’s Muammar El-Gheddafi and his call on “FAO to set up improved seed banks to address food security.”
Collecting germplasm for ecosystem restoration
Collecting all the native species in the United States, as well as developing restoration techniques and growing huge amounts of seed will take about 10 years and cost about $500 million, Dr. Havens said — a cost that she argues is well worth it.
That will include a nice batch of crop wild relatives… Incidentally, that $500 million is about twice the value of the endowment that is sometimes mentioned as being necessary to ensure long-term ex situ conservation of crop diversity.
Agrobiodiversity features in 2009 Development Marketplace awards
Our friend Ehsan Dulloo of Bioversity International is the frontman for a project that has just been selected as one of the winners of this year’s Development Marketplace awards.
A DM grant will enable Biodiversity International to protect the livelihoods of some 200 vulnerable women farmers, by providing access to seeds for locally-adapted varieties of crops. The project draws from gene banks, indigenous knowledge and farmer know-how, as well as traditional ways of adapting to climate variability.
There are several other agrobiodiversity projects among the winners. For example, “Peru’s Associación ANDES will support plant-breeding to increase diversity and production of nutritious potatoes and other tubers, improving health, incomes and quality of life for the community’s people.” And in the Philippines the “Trowel Development Foundation will replant mangroves and set up a value-chain system to fatten and market tie-crabs.” Well worth exploring the whole list. Congratulations to all.
Nibbles: Rice domestication, H5N1, Fisheries, Crop maps, Grafting, Livestock video, Perennial conference, Goat genetic patterns, Satellites, Large seeds, W4RA
- Dorian Fuller rounds up rice domestication latest.
- Deconstructing the persistence of H5N1.
- Artisanal fisheries and climate change don’t mix. No-take reserves, anyone?
- Mo’ better crop mapping.
- Multi-variety fruit trees for sale. Perfect Christmas gift.
- For your consideration: video on livestock science.
- First International Perennial Grain Breeding Workshop. Tell us about it, please!
- History of goat pastoralism. The revenge of geography.
- SciDev on remote sensing for drought and other disasters. IWMI presumably knows all about that.
- Boffins find seed size gene. Oregon State University Seed Laboratory doesn’t care.
- Web Alliance for Re-greening Africa. New one on me.