Mapping data in the CGIAR

I took my own advice and followed Africa Agriculture GIS Week on both the live video feed and Twitter yesterday, in particular the session on the CGIAR. Very interesting stuff going on all over the place, but you do have to wonder about communication within the system. Because on the one hand you have the CGIAR pulling together and mapping their and other people’s genebank data in the monumental effort that is GeneSys. And on the other you have CIMMYT producing a very neat online Wheat Atlas. And did really nobody think of putting the two together? I guess that’s one of the reasons why the CGIAR needs restructuring.

Nibbles: Agricultural landscapes, Seed banks, Maize genetics, Food diversity, Ancient food, Micronutrients status report, Seed systems, Punjab Agricultural University, Arable land, Dutch elm disease

Nibbles: Rust, Old rice, More old rice, Sticky rice, Mesoamerican balls, Prioritization, Legumes

  • Rust boffins meet in St Petersburg. Good luck to them: sounds like they’ll need it.
  • Did 3000-year-old rice really sprout in Vietnam? Nah.
  • Indian farmers queue up for old rice seeds. Not old as in the Vietnam case above though.
  • And more rice. Did the Chinese really use the sticky kind in mortar 1500 years ago? Yep.
  • More ancient technology. This time Mayan rubber.
  • “…a major leap forward in species-area relationship fitting…”: where will future habitat loss wreak the most havoc on plant species? And on crop wild relatives?
  • The pulses of Africa. Well, a couple of them.