GIS – Page 66 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

August 20, 2014August 18, 2014

Focusing on genebanks for climate change adaptation

The Focused Identification of Germplasm Strategy (FIGS) has been the subject of a fair number of posts here in the past couple of years. It has now clearly hit the big time, with a major workshop which got picked up by the BBC, no less. The latest paper to feature this strategy for more effectively mining genebank collections for the material you really want features the search for drought adaptation in faba beans.

Meanwhile, another workshop reminds us that breeding new varieties using the stuff you find in genebanks is just one way of adapting agriculture to climate change:

…there are various agricultural practices to offset the adverse effects of climate change on crop production and soil, such as mulching, that will help with water conservation and soil fertility, and crop rotation, which contributes to sustainable cultivation.

July 25, 2014July 25, 2014

Nibbles: Soil map, Dealing with pH, Egypt pix, Samoa taro & breadfruit, Fruit genomics, GM video, Twitter

Need soil info? There’s an app for that!
Like pH, for instance?
Photographing Egypt’s farms.
Frozen Samoan taro, anyone? Only the beginning…
Also from Samoa, a landmark breadfruit deal.
Alas, breadfruit is not one of the tree fruits included in the website Tree Fruit Genome Database Resources (tfGDR). Maybe they should get together with DivSeek? Or the guy growing 40 different fruits on one tree.
Soybean genetic modification 101, with video goodness.
While both Jeremy and I are otherwise engaged, blogging in general and Nibbling in particular might be a bit slow, but you can keep up with us on Twitter. If you dare.

July 14, 2014July 14, 2014

Nibbles: Coffee processing, British liquorice, Livestock maps, Chicken semen, Global Nutrition Report, Plant booze, Cuban urban ag, Forests & nutrition, Sustainable cacao, Climate-smart ag, Modelling landuse, Mapuche up in arms, Rothamstead experiment

Touring the world’s coffee processors.
Liquorice next? Starting in the UK?
India has 30% of the world’s cattle. Which you might not be able to guess from these very cool ILRI maps. Including one on chickens, in which the Nordic countries feature perhaps less than they should.
The Global Nutrition Report will have these indicators at country level. Some stuff there on fruit and vegetable consumption, but why nothing specifically on dietary diversity? Anyway, if you’d like to make suggestions, you can.
Wait, why is there nothing on alcohol consumption? And is diversity in alcohol-producing plants a good thing? I mean, nutrition-wise.
Uhm, nothing on urban agriculture either. I bet you that’s an indicator of something or other, nutrition-wise.
Maybe Amy Ickowitz of CIFOR will suggest some indicators. She has interesting data on forest cover and child nutrition.
How to make cacao cultivation more sustainable.
Andy Jarvis on how to scale up climate-smart agriculture without necessarily sacrificing goats. Nor, presumably, nutrition.
Model says environment can support subsistence hunting and agriculture only up to a point, and no more. Still no cure for cancer. But did someone tell the Mapuche?
Well, what do you know, genes come, and genes go.

July 3, 2014July 4, 2014

Nibbles: Tree drought tolerance, Whisky history, Barley drought tolerance, Old veggies, Old potatoes, Llamas vs goats, Sustainable ag, Chinese herbaria

Drought tolerance? It’s the carbs.
Whisky 101.
Coincidental mashup of the above. Barley used in whisky production provides clue to drought tolerance.
Pre-hispanic veggies.
Pre-hispanic carbs.
Pre-hispanic livestock.
Sustainable agriculture deconstructed.
GBIF scores Chinese specimens.

July 1, 2014July 1, 2014

An e-atlas for the ages

I do love maps. I love looking through atlases, even their faintly ridiculous 21st century incarnation, the e-atlas. But really, in this world we live in now — rather than that of bewhiskered gentlemen poring over suspiciously stained folios in the libraries of London clubs, motes of dust dancing in the air as each leaf is turned over and final plans are agreed for their next foray into the Heart of Darkness — what is an atlas for? Surely it is for more than just displaying the ingenuity and skill of the mapmakers? There is much ingenuity and skill on display in the new online version of the Atlas of African Agriculture Research & Development, don’t get me wrong. But what do the mapmakers think their atlas is for? I don’t think it is enough to say that there are

…plans for an online, open-access resource of spatial data and tools that will be generated and maintained by a community of research scientists, development analysts, and practitioners working in and for Africa.

If you’re going to call something an e-atlas and put it online, to much fanfare, you can’t just make the maps available for download and sharing as PDFs. That’s really no use to anyone. Take these maps on growing season length and its likely changes.

What anyone would want to do is start combining these with other data, say on — oh I don’t know, let me think — the distribution of germplasm in genebanks? Like this on pearl millet, according to Genesys.

I’m pretty sure that there must be some pearl millet landraces in genebanks somewhere with the adaptation to shorter growing seasons that we’re going to need in the sorts of places highlighted by that Map 2 from the e-atlas. And that we might find those with the help of their Map 1 and the data from Genesys (which I can donwload as a KML). But how can I be sure, when Maps 1 and 2 are only available as PDFs? ((As far as I can judge. Please do tell me I’m wrong.))

Anyway, maybe I won’t have long to wait. There are plans, after all. I don’t know, maybe the maps in the e-atlas are already available elsewhere as KMLs or shapefiles or something usable, and you just have to ask? But then, what is this e-atlas for? Nice maps, though. Lots of fun to leaf through.