More on Humberto Ríos Labrada, who has just won the Goldman Environmental Prize for his work on sustainable agriculture in Cuba: a Q&A and a video narrated by Robert Redford, no less.
Wild rices in the Protected Area of the Week
Those happy few, that band of brothers, who follow us on Twitter will know that the Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra is IUCN’s Protected Area of the Week. It is actually three protected areas: the Gunung Leuser National Park, the Kerinci Seblat National Park and the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. Great for Indonesia’s largest mammals, apparently, and I asked the question in my tweet whether they are equally good for wild rices.
Quick as a flash, Nora Castaneda at CIAT produced a map of wild rice accessions from Sumatra, based on IRRI data. Turns out two accessions of Oryza officinalis have been collected from the Gunung Leuser National Park. That’s the northernmost of the three protected areas, shown in pink.
GIBF doesn’t add much, unfortunately. But there could well be a number of other wild rice relatives in these parks. That we don’t know, or at any rate that it is pretty difficult to find out, is really an indictment of the disconnect between the agrobiodiversity and nature conservation communities.
Nibbles: Biocultural diversity, Maasai, Organics, Amazon ag
- IUCN publishes “Biocultural Diversity Conservation, a Global Sourcebook.”
- And here’s an example of the application of the above, I suppose.
- UNEP looks to boost organic farming in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
- Why don’t they just import organics from West Africa, like the rest of Europe?
- Wired does history of ag in Amazonia.
Nibbles: Peach genome, P, Marine protected areas
- Size isn’t everything, genome edition.
- Nutrient efficiency of agriculture, phosphorus edition.
- Win-wins, fisheries edition.
Towards the establishment of genetic reserves for crop wild relatives and landraces in Europe
The ECPGR In situ and On-farm Conservation Network Coordinating Group and others are organizing a symposium entitled “Towards the establishment of genetic reserves for crop wild relatives and landraces in Europe” at the University of Madeira, Funchal (Portugal), from 13-16 September 2010.
Conservation biologists, protected area managers and experts from the agrobiodiversity sector engaged in the management and use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture are welcome to attend the symposium.
Interested? You can find out more on the website of the Centre for Macaronesian Studies of the University of Madeira, one of the co-organizers.