- Adam Forbes updates us on his travels in Ethiopia and Peru in search of seeds. Check out his pix too.
- “…sea cucumber populations across the globe, from Asia to the Galapagos, are increasingly in trouble.” Oh dear.
- Satellites help reindeer herders by looking for snow melt. Sounds very cost-effective.
- IFPRI says agriculture will be “dramatically” affected by climate change. Oh dear.
- Keeping bees in cities.
- All you ever wanted to know about taro diseases. With pic goodness! Via.
- Walking London’s markets.
- Navarre: “276 varieties of autochthonous apple tree have been described.”
Zoos in trouble
The financial mess is wreaking havoc with the funding of zoos in the US. Conservation of globally important fauna, you say?
When you’re the mayor of Philadelphia or governor of New York or Minnesota House minority leader, and you’re trying to keep libraries open and children insured and state troopers paid, the preservation of, say, South African’s Humboldt penguin can seem a little less pressing.
Entertainment and education?
…the first is a no-brainer for financial paring, and the second has already been pruned through the elimination of after-school programs and cuts to state college budgets, among others. In this way, the multiple purposes of zoos — a trifecta once highly valued — have today made the institutions a target on government balance sheets.
Are botanical gardens in the same boat? And are genebanks next?
Nibbles: Conference, Funding, Borlaug, Bananas, Indian genebanks, Cassava cooking, Bees, Beer
- FARA-led Conference on Agricultural Biodiversity in Africa, 2010
- Switzerland will not cut support to genebank in Africa.
- Yesterday’s birthday paean to Norman Borlaug,
- Man worries (inchoately) about banana extinction.
- “Over 20,000 indigenous varieties of Indian rice and other food grains have been conserved under Crop Germplasm Conservation at the gene banks.”
- IITA gets USAID support to come up with better cassava recipes. Luigi comments: “All the money in the world will not be enough.”
- Giving native bees a home.
- Bespoke organic beer in the UK. Sweet!
Nibbles: Adaptation, Vegetables, Wood, Allotment, Earthworms, Salmon, Bees, Malaria, Potatoes, Apples
- ICRISAT: “The impact of climate change on the yields under low input agriculture is likely to be minimal as other factors will continue to provide the overriding constraints to crop growth and yield.” So that’s all right then.
- Book and CD-ROM on African indigenous veggies.
- CD-ROM of wood characteristics.
- The agrobiodiversity of “…the oldest and largest area of detached town gardens in Britain” being surveyed. Cultivated since 1605. Wow.
- Earthworm Week! Yay!
- “This is an exciting time for salmon conservation in the Pahsimeroi.”
- Hawaiian native bees in trouble. Get in line.
- The world has a malaria map. Very cool.
- The Canary Islands tries to save its potatoes, sweet and otherwise.
- The Forgotten Fruits Summit. You heard me.
Revising the US Plant Hardiness Zone Map
“All gardeners are in zone denial.”
The zones in question are the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Plant Hardiness Zones, which show where different garden species are supposed to do well. Gardeners, of course, think they know better, and will always try to push that envelope.
Anyway, the current version of the Plant Hardiness Zone Map was done way back in 1990, and needed updating. So there’s a new one coming soon. It’s bound to be different, in places very different. A whole new set of recommendations for gardeners to go into denial about.
USDA is not describing what the new map will show, but outside experts say that the trend is for zones to shift northward. “Some places have definitely warmed, although others haven’t changed at all,” says Tony Avent, owner of North Carolina-based Plant Delights Nursery and an advisor for the revision.
You can’t do much with the current map online, but the next version will be downloadable to your GIS. It will also be more sophisticated, with better data, better interpolation and better resolution (800m):
The revised map draws on 30 years of data and uses a complex algorithm to factor in other variables that affect local temperatures, such as altitude and the presence of water bodies.
Will some of the USDA’s clonal repositories (field genebanks) find themselves in the wrong zone?