GIS – Page 106 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

January 21, 2011June 20, 2011

Uncontacted agrobiodiversity

Survival International has a new website on Uncontacted Tribes:

More than 100 tribes around the world reject contact with outsiders. This is their story.

Somewhat weirdly, the website includes a map, although it is pointed out that it “won’t help anyone make ‘first contact.’ But it will help to stop oil companies and loggers from invading the lands of uncontacted tribes.”

Be that as it may, I could not resist mashing it up in Google Earth ((And let me take this opportunity of thanking Google for the Pro license.)) with the data in Genesys on the world’s holdings of agrobiodiversity. This is the result for an area comprising the Brazilian state of Rondonia and some surrounding regions.

Not surprisingly, there’s not much in the way of germplasm accessions from the general areas occupied by uncontacted tribes. Oil and logging companies may not be the only things that these tribes should be worried about.

January 19, 2011January 19, 2011

Nibbles: IK, Fragaria, Citrus, Millet breeding, Vitis, Agricultural biodiversity, Satellite imagery, Subsistence

Indigenous knowledge of agrobiodiversity makes the news in Indonesia.
Reconstructing the strawberry.
And reconstructing the history of cultivated citrus fruits.
ICRISAT millet breeders get an a new toy.
Plenty of diversity in the cultivated grape still. And it’s going to need it.
Biodiversity (and agrobiodiversity?) needed for farm productivity. Well I never! But more mixed results available too. What’s a poor boy to think?
SPOT 5 imagery can be used to identify crops. In Texas. But in Tanzania?
Agricultural biodiversity and subsistence traditions, Part 2. In the Ozarks. But in Omo? (And here’s Part 1.)

January 14, 2011January 14, 2011

Nibbles: Mongolian asses

It’s always good to be able nibble a paper with “wild asses” in the title. Especially since there’s nothing else on the internet today.

December 17, 2010December 17, 2010

Nibbles: Yemen, Seed moisture, Irish fruits, Indian genetic erosion, Goji, Sustainable Ag, Green Revolution,

Probably way more than you want to know about food security in Yemen, but stunning nonetheless.
NordGen tells us how to measure seed moisture content. In Russian.
The Irish have benefited from at least one bank. Alas, that bank is Pavlovsk.
Indian farmers turning their back on traditional crops because of climate change. Hope NBPGR is on the case.
Goji berries only as good as other fruit and veg, with “significant placebo effect”.
[W]e are in the midst of shaping a new perspective on sustainable agriculture, it says here. Right.
All you ever wanted to know about Green Revolution 2.0, thanks to Anastasia.
Speaking of which .. sustainable ag under discussion.

December 17, 2010May 22, 2018

Mapping rice agrobiodiversity from around the world

Ooooh, nice article from our friends at IRRI on mapping rice genebank accessions, something close to our hearts here at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, as regular readers will testify.

I guess the main point made by the money map, reproduced below, is that while IRRI may be managing on behalf of us all (under Article 15 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, no less) the largest and most diverse collection of rice germplasm in the world, it doesn’t have everything.

Problem is, not all of those other genebanks which nicely complement the IRRI collection make their material quite so obviously, freely and officially available to others. Plus, of course, we need the data from CIAT, EURISCO and all those other national genebanks. Genesys will help with that, hopefully, eventually. In the meantime, for comparison, this is what it now sees ((Let me remind you that currently includes data from the CGIAR Centres, EURISCO and USDA.)):

My eye was inevitably drawn to the outliers on that IRRI map. What is that northernmost collection, maybe in Kazakhstan? And alas the southernmost collection seems to have been cut off.

Anyway, now for the gap-filling!