- The Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture re-launches its website. And also the Global Livestock Production and Health Atlas (GLiPHA). Must be an FAO thing.
- “We are grateful to the governments who have made voluntary contributions to make this possible,” said Dr Shakeel Bhatti, Secretary of the Treaty’s Governing Body.
- Bighorn sheep at risk from climate change, computer says.
- The changing face of Japanese agriculture.
- “We are blurring natural boundaries: forests are no longer forests, meadows are no longer meadows. We have lost sight of eternity and infinity and are destroying nature for future generations.”
- Pope name-checks Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Happy 150th birthday to the Missouri Botanical Garden
There’s a nice, informative piece on the history and achievements of the Missouri Botanical Gardens in the St Louis Post-Dispatch. It celebrates the garden’s 150th anniversary this year, very much focusing on the international research aspects of its work.
Leading those efforts is Peter Raven, the garden’s director since 1971.
“What Dr. Raven has done is establish a world-class research organization that’s dedicated to protecting biodiversity around the globe,” said Roger Beachy, president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. “His vision is global, and the garden’s work reflects that.”
You may remember a little post we did about the place last year on the occasion of its 6 millionth specimen.
Not only are garden scientists routinely discovering plants new to science, they’re also investigating plants to be used in new drugs and those that form the backbone of the world’s food supply.
Unfortunately there was not much more in the article about the plants that form the “backbone of the world’s food supply,” which I take to be a reference to work on crop wild relatives.
One tool the garden has developed that is assisting scientists do just that is the Tropicos database, which contains more than 3.5 million plant records, the world’s largest.
“If you want to preserve an ecosystem, you’d better know what plants you have,” said Rainer Bussmann, director of the William L. Brown Center for Plant Genetic Resources.
The Brown Center is where garden staff conducts its applied research, studying plants used for medicine, supplements, food and clothing. Among the plants garden staff have reviewed is the rosy periwinkle, which produces a drug shown to help children with leukemia.
Surely there was a better example than that old chestnut!
The Post-Dispatch also has a bunch of videos on the garden.
10% of world’s plants in the Millennium Seed Bank
…25% by 2020, at $2,800 per species. Not sure I understand the bit at the end about “molecular and genetic markers for the viability of seeds,” but there’s more on the website. And thanks for the plug for Svalbard.
Crop wild relatives in the spotlight
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture will be holding the 3rd session of its Governing Body in Tunis next week. If you’re going, let us have your impressions, please.
And watch out for the side event on “Securing Crop Wild Relative Conservation: Lessons Learned from Global Partnership,” organised by Bioversity International and the Food and Agriculture Organization, which will take place in the Salle Carthage 3 of the Hotel Barcelo Carthage Thalasso on 3 June at 18:00. Soft drinks and snacks will be served, I’m reliably informed by our friend Danny, who will be there making sure that order and decorum is maintained.
The side event will highlight the critical importance of crop wild relatives to global food security and the urgency of taking action to ensure their conservation, especially in the context of climate change. The experiences and outputs of the UNEP/GEF supported project, aimed at enhancing conservation and utilization of crop wild relatives, will be described, including the development of national and global information systems and national in situ conservation strategies.
Berry genebank the pride of Oregon
There’s a lengthy article in Portland Monthly on the National Clonal Germplasm Repository at Corvallis, a unit within the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA/ARS). It focuses on a couple of the people working there in particular, for example strawberry expert Kim Hummer:
Inside one of these greenhouses, diffused winter light streams through the glass ceiling, illuminating horticulturalist Kim Hummer and her colleagues as they hover over a small potted strawberry plant that, considering its history-steeped neighbors, appears undeserving of so much attention. Devoid of fruit, the plant’s heart-shaped leaves are edged brown, its runner pale red. It doesn’t look much different than any one of the other hundreds of strawberry plants crowding dozens of long tables. Yet Hummer’s voice brims with excitement. “This is a wild decaploid,” she says. “It’s very special.”
Want to know the species, which comes from the side of a volcano on Russia’s Iturup Island? Read the whole thing. There’s a lot, lot more.