Building a plant conservation toolkit

70 per cent of the genetic diversity of crops including their wild relatives and other socio-economically valuable plant species conserved, while respecting, preserving and maintaining associated indigenous and local knowledge.

That would be Target 9 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, and we are all fully behind it, and all the others, of course. How to do it, though? Well, the new Plants 2020 website is planning to provide a toolkit in due course. ((Not a clearing-house, I am advised.)) When? Well:

Please check back regularly for updates and new information.

Ugh. Yep. No RSS feed. Look, I know I’m nay-saying again, and that it’s really boring. But no RSS feed these days is just not on. I hope they’ll fix that soon because this will be an important resource, and I want to keep up to date without having to check back regularly.

Nibbles: Collecting, US heirlooms, Sequencing NUS, Nutrition strategies, Potatoes and climate change, Italian genetics

  • NSF re-invents the genebank wheel. No, that’s unfair, they’ve given much-needed money to evolutionary scientists to go out and collect seeds of 34 species in a really pernickety way.
  • Heirlooms being lost (maybe) and being re-found in the US. Thanks to Eve (on FB) for both.
  • A Cape tomato by any other name…
  • Gates Foundation has a new nutrition strategy. Gotta admire the chutzpah of summarizing the thing in basically half a side of A4. Compare and contrast, both as to content and presentation, with the CGIAR. Unfair again, I know, but that’s the kind of mood I’m in. Jess unavailable for comment.
  • Very complicated, very pretty maps about potatoes and climate change.
  • “I failed to notice substantial contributions to discussions or presentations from breeders or seed organizations, the end users of so much of the research discussed.” Pat Heslop Harrison calls ’em like he seems ’em.

Nibbles: Baobab, Plant cuttings & carnivalia, Apples, Fodder, Range management, PNG blog, Cattle breeding, Food security questions

Brainfood: Sorghum core diversity, Indian mango diversity, Montia potential, Assisted migration, Corchorus diversity, Soil DNA, Fire!, Coffee pest, Earthworms

Making life simpler for you, we have created an open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here. If you’re already using Mendeley, feel free to join the group (and use it to suggest papers we might miss). You can also discuss papers there, but frankly, we’d prefer you to do that here. Or on Facebook. Even if you don’t use Mendeley, you can subscribe to the RSS feed from the group and get stuff that way. Are we cool, or what?