- Moche bean writing.
- “For Liberia’s subsistence farmers like Jeanet Gay, however, the Nerica may not offer such a ready solution to their annual hunger gap – indeed it may ultimately threaten their livelihoods.”
- AVRDC commits to the South Pacific.
- “The Victorians threw Apis mellifera mellifera out of hives in favour of more industrious foreign species.” Now this native British bee is coming back.
Press alerted as to importance of agrobiodiversity
USDA had a nice press release out yesterday about the importance of conserving crop diversity. The example used is the Russian wheat aphid threat to the United States back in 1986. But why do this just now? In preparation for the Third Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture? But that’s two weeks away. Maybe for the International Day of Biodiversity? That’s still a week away, though. I don’t get it. I like it: the time is always right to bang on about plant genetic resources conservation. But I don’t get it.
Finnish genebank attacked
Something else to add to the long list of problems that can afflict field genebanks:
Hordes of moles have penetrated into the MTT Agrifood Research Finland plant gene bank in Laukaa during the winter.
A lot of damage was done to fruit tree saplings in particular. Fortunately, there is a back-up site, but not all material is safety duplicated. More protective measures are to be introduced. Also, there seems to be a lot of cryopreservation work going on at Laukaa, so maybe in time there will be an added level of protection. MTT Agrifood research have a nice pamphlet on Finnish agrobiodiversity and its conservation.
Wild fruit relatives threatened in Central Asia
Fauna & Flora International and Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) have published a Red List of Trees of Central Asia. This is part of the Global Trees Campaign.
The new report identifies 44 tree species in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan as globally threatened with extinction. Many of these species occur in the unique fruit and nut forests of Central Asia, an estimated 90% of which have been destroyed in the past 50 years.
One of the threatened fruit trees is the red-fleshed Malus niedzwetzkyana, from Kyrgyzstan.
Working with the Kyrgyz National Academy of Sciences, the Global Trees Campaign is identifying populations of this rare tree in Kyrgyzstan and taking measures to improve their conservation. With distinctive red-fleshed fruit, the Niedzwetzky apple is an excellent flagship for the conservation and sustainable management of this beleagured forest type.
The report is available online.
Botanical garden database heaven
An email alert from the good folks at Botanical Gardens Conservation International (BCGI) tells me they have spruced up their website. And the website in turns reminds me that May 18th is Plant Conservation Day, and we should probably do something about that here.
But the main reason for the alert is to draw our attention to two online databases: PlantSearch and GardenSearch.
PlantSearch enables users to locate rare or threatened plant species in cultivation around the world. This database is compiled from lists of living collections submitted to BGCI by the world’s botanic gardens. The database presently includes over 575,000 records representing almost 180,000 taxa from 692 gardens.
And you can find a garden anywhere in the world using GardenSearch, with over 2658 records. We’re working on an interactive botanic garden mapping tool too…
There’s a filter for crop wild relatives. Seems to me the botanical gardens community may be a bit further down the road out of database hell than the world’s genebanks.