- “No a la droga, si al caucho y al cacao.”
- Spotting banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) with biochemical tests.
- The tree that owns itself. Take that, lawyers!
- “The old Chinese gardener in ragged blue coat and trousers with a wispy white beard who potters around smoking one of these long pipes with a tiny bowl — and a mongol cap, periodically performing elaborate grafting techniques on the plum tree.”
- Mexican coffee growers protect surrounding forest. Nepal forest community moving in similar direction?
- Mapping the competition between soy and forest in Brazil.
- Weird agrobiodiversity corner: pseudomonad bacteria help maize take up nutrients.
- Using herbicides to help prairie establishment (including sunflower wild relative).
- Stop press: “Agricultural genetics is one of the easier parts of the solution.”
- “…wildcats preferred resting sites in shelter structures near forest edges.”
- Video on Greek yogurt. Jeremy comments: “I’m going back to Crete.”
The last colonial museum of economic botany reopens
Thanks to Dirk Enneking for this great tip:
One of my favourite museums and, apparently one of its kind, has just re-opened in Adelaide, South Australia, the Museum of Economic Botany, a former promotion facility for underutilised crops.
Looks great. If anyone goes, let us know about it. Thanks, Dirk.
Eden makes a comeback of sorts
It was over two years ago that we blogged about attempts to bring back Iraq’s southern marshes, and the agriculture they supported. Now, via Wired, there’s evidence from NASA of at least partial success.
A United Nations Environment Program assessment of the Iraq marsh restoration in 2006 concluded that roughly 58 percent of the marsh area present in the mid-1970s had been restored in the sense that standing water was seasonally present and vegetation was reasonably dense.
Here’s what this (partial) reclaiming of the marshes looks like from space:
But serious concerns remain: the water used for reflooding may not be sustainable as the population recovers and expands its agricultural efforts, and the region may have already suffered an irreversible loss of species diversity.
Would be nice to know to what extent traditional agriculture is also coming back. Maybe this could be discerned from the aerial images? What has happened to local landraces in the meantime?
Happy 150th birthday to the Missouri Botanical Garden
There’s a nice, informative piece on the history and achievements of the Missouri Botanical Gardens in the St Louis Post-Dispatch. It celebrates the garden’s 150th anniversary this year, very much focusing on the international research aspects of its work.
Leading those efforts is Peter Raven, the garden’s director since 1971.
“What Dr. Raven has done is establish a world-class research organization that’s dedicated to protecting biodiversity around the globe,” said Roger Beachy, president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. “His vision is global, and the garden’s work reflects that.”
You may remember a little post we did about the place last year on the occasion of its 6 millionth specimen.
Not only are garden scientists routinely discovering plants new to science, they’re also investigating plants to be used in new drugs and those that form the backbone of the world’s food supply.
Unfortunately there was not much more in the article about the plants that form the “backbone of the world’s food supply,” which I take to be a reference to work on crop wild relatives.
One tool the garden has developed that is assisting scientists do just that is the Tropicos database, which contains more than 3.5 million plant records, the world’s largest.
“If you want to preserve an ecosystem, you’d better know what plants you have,” said Rainer Bussmann, director of the William L. Brown Center for Plant Genetic Resources.
The Brown Center is where garden staff conducts its applied research, studying plants used for medicine, supplements, food and clothing. Among the plants garden staff have reviewed is the rosy periwinkle, which produces a drug shown to help children with leukemia.
Surely there was a better example than that old chestnut!
The Post-Dispatch also has a bunch of videos on the garden.
Nibbles: AnGR newsletter, Sheep conservation, Gardener biographies
- Animal Genetic Resources Information Bulletin 44.
- How the Sheep Trust was born.
- Map of British gardeners.