An interesting post on the Denver Botanic Garden’s blog led me to the Center for Plant Conservation‘s ((Hosted by the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri.)) database of the National Collection of Endangered Plants of the US, which I’m ashamed to say I knew nothing about. It is interesting to us here because it includes crop wild relatives like Helianthus species. There’s also lots of information on how to fight invasives, which has been the subject of some discussion here in the past few days.
Micronesian bananas on display
Lois Englberger of the Island Food Community of Pohnpei tells us that “Dana Lee Ling is doing some exciting work on conservation and promotion of Pohnpei banana varieties, along with his teaching at the College of Micronesia-FSM.” The College has an ethnogarden, which includes 14 banana varieties, among many other things.
Australia’s forage genebanks to be mothballed?
The Seed Hunter now has a blog, and is using it to expose the “national scandal” of Australia’s disappearing forages collections. Read it and weep. Welcome to the blogosphere, Ken.
Gourmet agrobiodiversity
Remember the cacao trifecta from a couple of days ago? Well, the run continues! We heard about this from the horse’s mouth some time ago, of course. But well worth repeating.
Nibbles: mtDNA, Bison, Crises
- mtDNA inheritance not so straightforward after all. Everybody panic.
- Some bison herds more diverse than others. Care needed in genetic management of species. Well I never.
- It’s not a food crisis, it’s a crop diversity crisis.