- Did you know the Encyclopedia of Life does crop wild relatives?
- Smallholders with mixed crop and livestock systems are the key to it all. My mother-in-law says: I agree.
- Deforestation is bad for the health.
- 2010 Biodiversity Indicator Partnership launches National Biodiversity Indicators Portal.
- Aussies trial a new, secret orange spud. Yeah I can really see that being a huge success.
- The McItaly kerfuffle rumbles on. Much like your stomach after you’ve eaten one.
- The “rewilding” kerfuffle rumbles on. Much like those herds of wildebeest roaming majestically across the Great Plains.
- Rewilding an ancient pre-Hispanic drink. Ooops, I guess that should be reviving.
Geographical indications to preserve Ethiopia’s biodiversity
From André Heitz.
Ethiopia is one of the frontrunners in the use of Intellectual Property to make the best use of its plant genetic and traditional knowledge assets. In the absence of legislation on geographical indications, it has endeavoured to use collective trade marks in the main export markets to add value to its Sidamo, Yirgacheffe, and Harrar/Harar coffees. There is more on the Ethiopian Coffee Trademarking and Licensing Initiative at the Ethiopian Coffee Network and Light Years IP.
The Ethiopian Parliament is now expected to pass geographical indications legislation later this year. This will then provide the legal basis for Ethiopia’s plans to register geographical indications protection, first nationally and then abroad, over emblematic home garden products like coffee, beans, spices and condiments or aromatic plants.
The Home Gardens of Ethiopia project says:
Biodiversity is under threat everywhere, and Ethiopia is no exception.
This country features an exceptional biodiversity, and its gardens, shaped generation after generation by rural populations, represent a unique natural and cultural heritage that must be handed down to future generations.
To preserve this horticultural heritage, Ethiopia has chosen to design and implement an effective institutional and promotional tool: a Geographical Indications system.
The “Home Gardens of Ethiopia” project seeks to promote and develop native horticultural productions, while preserving in situ the biodiversity of the country’s gardens. Its approach is both original and efficient: to offer farmers communities legal protection and help them promote selected native products with new marketing opportunities. Ethiopian farmers will be able to make their traditional modes of production more sustainable, and preserve the biodiversity of which they are the custodians.
We’ll keep fingers crossed.
Unique peanuts in Peruvian protected area
The Peruvian National Protected Areas Service has decided to allocate funds to help protect a large swath of the Amazon this year, which is home to several endangered species and indigenous groups.
The Protected Areas Service pledged to allocate USD 280,000 for surveillance activities in the massive area – encompassing a region larger than El Salvador – formed by the Alto Purus National Park and the Purus Communal Reserve. The protected area was officially created in 2004 in part through the support of WWF.
Interesting enough, but when we ran the WWF announcement by our resident expert on the agrobiodiversity of Amazonia, he had this to say:
Lots of unique peanut landraces are known to be cultivated by the Yaminahua — and surely other native groups — that live up in there on the Upper Purus.
It would be interesting to know if the Peruvian National Protected Areas Service’s surveillance activities extend to crop diversity. Maybe someone out there knows?
Nibbles: Amman, Banana disease, Survey, Qatar, Wetlands
- MSM on Amman meeting; eat Luigi’s dust.
- Black sigatoka disease confirmed on St Lucia; eats banana plantations.
- “Eggs come from sheep” kids survey surprise shock; eat anything.
- Qatar builds a genebank.
- On World Wetlands Day, Lake Chad protected and British farmland flooded. Will some crop wild relatives benefit?
Nibbles: Spud, Mali’s farmers, Pollan, Geneflow, Taiwan botanic garden, Pollinators squared, Vegetarianism
- A makeover for the potato.
- Mali’s farmers want improved landraces, not fancy-shmancy hybrids.
- Biofortified does Pollan. And Pollan does Oprah…
- The long-term consequences of introducing new genes to populations are not all that bad. Relevance for crop wild relatives? More research needed…
- The Dr. Cecilia Koo Botanic Conservation Center (KBCC) in Taiwan described.
- Almond tree produces poison in nectar to attract insects? Go figure. In other pollinator news, they’re declining in Central Europe.
- What would a world without domesticated livestock look like? ILRI DG questions vegetarians.