GIS – Page 112 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

July 31, 2010July 30, 2010

Bringing back the Iraqi marshes

We blogged over a year ago about the re-flooding of the Iraqi marshes, but fairly briefly, and it’s great to see a long piece about this restoration process in Der Spiegel today. The slideshow which accompanies the article provides the best visual summary I’ve seen of what happened to the marshes — and their inhabitants, with their crops and livestock. I’ve put the “before” and “after” shots side-by-side below:

Apart from its inherent interest, the Der Spiegel article also gives me the excuse to mention that a detailed map of the world’s river systems has just been made available, by Bernhard Lehner at McGill University in Montréal, Canada. Is anyone keeping track of the proliferation of such global geographic dataset? Google? ESRI? The CGIAR’s Spatial Information Conundrum? Anyone?

July 30, 2010July 30, 2010

Nibbles: CGIAR “change”, Cuba, Data, Pavlovsk, Homegardens, Soil bacteria, Thai rice

GFAR publishes list of Megaprogramme (or whatever they are called) consultations.
Cuba’s Miscellaneous Crops Under-delegate Rolando Macias Cardenas reports on tomato paste. In other news, Cuba has a Miscellaneous Crops Under-delegate. No, wait, that’s not really news.
While Sachs et al. moan about better agricultural data, CIAT go out and get it.
The Pavlovsk TweetMedvedev campaign rolls on.
“…maximum diversity can be conserved at an intermediate level of income” in Javanese bamboo-tree homegardens.
Right, so trees “farm” bacteria. What some people will write in a press release.
Thailand’s rice farmers trying to cope with climate change. Like they have a choice.

July 27, 2010July 27, 2010

Nibbles: Plant breeding book, Ug99, NGS, Monitoring, Genetic diversity and productivity, Adaptive evolution, Amaranthus, Nabhan, Herbarium databases, Pepper, Shade coffee and conservation, Apples, Pathogen diversity, Phytophthora

Book on history of plant breeding reviewed.
Rust never sleeps.
Ask not what next generation sequencing can do for you.
Long-term datasets in biodiversity research. Nothing about genetic diversity though. Bummer.
And genetic diversity is important, is it? Yep, it increases productivity, at least in Arabidopsis.
No evidence of adaptive evolution in plants. What? Surely some mistake? I’m serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
The latest from Worldwatch on African leafy veggies. Again, some links would have been nice.
And Worldwatch also interviews Gary Nabhan on Vavilov.
You can browse Tropicos specimens in Google Earth.
Using pepper to protect stored rice.
More evidence of the goodness of shade coffee.
The diversity of Bosnian apples.
Mammal plus bird species richness explains 72% of country-to-country variation in the number of human pathogens. Diversity begets diversity. But which way does the causality go?
Phytophthora infestans in Estonia: “…higher proportion of metalaxyl resistant isolates from large conventional farms than from small conventional farms or from organic farms.” Metalaxyl is a fungicide.

July 25, 2010July 24, 2010

Visualizating the spread of agriculture

A lengthy post over at The Archaeobotanist on the mapping of human-affected vegetation — anthromes — has reminded me that I never did link to a great visualization of the last 300 years’ worth of agricultural intensification and spread. The common link between the two seems to be Prof. Navin Ramankutty of McGill University, who had a hand in the building of both datasets.

July 25, 2010July 25, 2010

Nibbles: Protected area management, Yam domestication, Ottoman cooking, Measuring rice drought tolerance, Proteomics, Lupinus, Areca, Jethobudho, Nutrition megaprogramme, Soil bacteria

Concentrating management practices on conserving a particular plant species may have bad consequences for other bits of biodiversity. Lessons for crops wild relatives?
Benin’s farmers ennoble wild yams.
A Lebanese lunch is an educational experience. Right.
Paddyomics video. Nothing to do with the Irish. It’s about how IRRI is automating, er, everything about its phenotyping.
Tamarind’s environmental niche is, in fact, er, niches?
Different wheat genomes generate distinct protein profiles.
Phylogenetic relationships of a new Mediterranean lupin.
Betel nut chewing endangers coral. Kinda. Traditional and all that, but an unpleasant habit nonetheless.
Our friend Bhuwon and others tell the story of the participatory improvement and formal release of Jethobudho rice landrace in Nepal.
CGIAR elicits comment on the Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health megaprogramme. Until August 1.
Bacterial diversity boosts maize yields.