- IRRI tries to raise $300 million for rice in Asia. Including for that genebank of theirs?
- Sheep phylogeographic genetic structure weak, but not completely absent, thank goodness.
- Examples of sustainable biofuels. No snickering at the back there.
- How to manage tree genetic resources under climate change. By some friends.
- Almonds 101.
- “…testing the genetic and immunological limits of poultry.” And then eating the results.
- Grassland restoration needs to take into account functional diversity. And DNA?
- Presentation on community forestry management in Niger. Nice story.
- Senegalese vegetable farming project uses terra preta but modern seed. Go figure.
- Ancient farmers off the hook for loss of key wheat gene. Plant breeders to blame, apparently.
Protecting edible orchids around the world
Well, national parks may not be all that great at conserving crop wild relatives, but a fascinating article in the latest newsletter of the SADC Plant Genetic Resources Network, which is unfortunately not online, alerts me to the fact that a Tanzanian national park was set up a few years back to protect edible orchids.
Last year, WCS released a report documenting how the region’s orchids were being exploited by local people, who exported the plants into neighboring Zambia, where they are eaten as a delicacy. The report says that up to 85 orchid species are being harvested for use in chikanda or kinaka, a delicacy in which the root or tuber of terrestrial orchids is the key ingredient in a type of meatless sausage.
Chikanda is an unsustainable industry in Zambia itself. Edible orchids are also big in Malawi. And they’re sought after in other parts of the world as well, notably Turkey, where their use in making a delicious traditional desert is endangering them. I couldn’t find any reference to protected areas in Turkey being set up specially for them, but the commercial export of the orchids has been banned since 2003.
Humberto Ríos Labrada interview and video online
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.