Indigenous knowledge systems

June 29, 2011July 1, 2011

Educate girls, plant a school garden, promote biodiversity

What’s not to like?

NewImage

This post is simply an abuse of authorial rights to promote a project. I just received the second project report from Educate 1300 Girls By Restoring A Marrakech Garden, which I am supporting via Global Giving. Why that project? Because it is relevant to me in all sorts of ways. Maybe to you too; they still need to raise about $15,000.

During the past academic year, thirty students conducted their own field research by interviewing Marrakechi herbalists about important cultural recipes. [The Global Diversity Foundation] is now organizing a database of the girls’ findings, titled, “An Ethnobotanical Study of Five Traditional Women’s Recipes.” In the autumn of this year, the girls will be able to re-examine, analyze, and discuss their own data. We hope that this will be the first of many such educational initiatives at Lalla Aouda Saadia.

I look forward to the next report, which I hope will tell me more about those traditional recipes, and to the garden’s continued growth.

June 29, 2011June 29, 2011

Nibbles: Qat, Neolithic, Indian nutrition, Indian fish resources, San Diego zoo genebank, Oats, food Security

Tax qat? Rather you than me, dude.
” …non-domesticated animals and plants may give hints on the direction and timing of early human expansion routes.”
” The question is why hunger is prevalent when the nature has blessed India with 20 agro-ecological regions and 60 sub-regions to produce the widest variety of food grains, fruits and vegetables in the world?” And it’s a good question.
“We have sent a report regarding the occurrence of exotic fishes in such a huge quantity to the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources (NBFGR), Lucknow.” In other news, India has a National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources.
San Diego Zoo works to conserve Africa apes. Fine. But did you know it has a Native Seed Gene Bank?
Swedes and oats; recipe for cold-tolerant varieties.
Empowering Farmers to Achieve Food Security. The Head of Food Security at Syngenta International explains how.

June 27, 2011June 23, 2011

Brainfood: Benin diversity, Catalan diversity, Serbian sorghum, Flowering in barley and sunflower, Potato nutritional quality, Cacao genebank management, Potato genebank management, Caribbean cattle, Venezuelan CWR, Ecogeographic surveys, Refugia, Vegetation change, Fisheries, Botanic gardens, Crop diversity patterns, Old trees

Diversity, geographical, and consumption patterns of traditional vegetables in sociolinguistic communities in Benin: Implications for domestication and utilization. 245 species, from 62 families, 80% wild-harvested.
Landraces in situ conservation: A case study in high-mountain home gardens in Vall Fosca, Catalan Pyrenees, Iberian Peninsula. 39 landraces of 31 species, disappearing fast.
Origin, history, morphology, production, improvement, and utilization of broomcorn [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] in Serbia. Summarizes 60 years of experience.
The timing of flowering in barley and sunflower dissected. In the former, variation in photoperiod sensitivity occurred both pre- and post-domestication. In the latter, variation is clinal.
Cultivated and wild Solanum species as potential sources for health-promoting quality traits. Some of the latter are pretty good.
Microsatellite fingerprinting in the International Cocoa Genebank, Trinidad: accession and plot homogeneity information for germplasm management. A quarter of plots were mixtures. Well that’s no good. Huge amount of stuff in this issue of PGR-CU.
Construction of an integrated microsatellite and key morphological characteristic database of potato varieties on the EU common catalogue. So that the above doesn’t happen.
Footprints of selection in the ancestral admixture of a New World Creole cattle breed. Lots of African and zebu blood in Guadeloupe cattle.
Inventory of related wild species of priority crops in Venezuela. Basically a big list.
Potential of herbarium records to sequence phenological pattern: a case study of Aconitum heterophyllum in the Himalaya. Could be used to flesh out the above kind of thing.
Refugia: identifying and understanding safe havens for biodiversity under climate change. How to spot refugia past and future, which would be useful for the above-but-one kind of thing.
Modelling biome shifts and tree cover change for 2050 in West Africa. Climate change leads to greening, human impact to browning.
Comparison of modern and historical fish catches (AD 750–1400) to inform goals for marine protected areas and sustainable fisheries. Along the Kenyan coast. Amazingly, comparisons are possible, and they show a deterioration in quality and quantity.
The biodiversity benefits of botanic gardens. They are there, despite their history with invasives, but gardens need to get their act together. Which they are doing.
Domesticated crop richness in human subsistence cultivation systems: a test of macroecological and economic determinants. Number of crop species grown depends on latitude, habitat heterogeneity and commitment to agriculture (as opposed to foraging, herding and exchange). Can’t make up my mind if this is interesting or predictable. Maybe it is both. Would be great to apply same method to infraspecific diversity too.
The age of monumental olive trees (Olea europaea) in northeastern Spain. Maybe over 600 years.

June 25, 2011June 25, 2011

Move over Bill Gates

We’ve blogged a few times about the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), and I don’t really want to do so again at any length now. Suffice to say that the jury is still out on whether it works as advertised. The reason I bring it up at all is that I’ve just found out from CTA via their Facebook page that there’s a new SRI manual out, which on further investigation led me to the mother lode of SRI manuals, which turns out to be part-supported by the Better U Foundation. Yeah, I never heard of it either. But it clearly has a great interest in SRI, not to mention an inventive web designer. The philanthropist behind it? Jim Carrey. Yeah, that Jim Carrey. That’s a pitch I’d have liked to witness.

June 24, 2011November 29, 2017

Nibbles: Adaptation, Soil bacteria, AnGR, Edible flowers, Potato chips, Ancient beer

July issue of CSA News, official magazine for members of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America, has article on “Crop Adaptation to Climate Change” based on official CSSA position statement, “Crop Adaptation to Climate Change.”
Factsheet on bacterial diversity and why it’s good for soils.
FAO guidelines for the In Vivo Conservation of Animal Genetic Resources discussed in Europe.
Please eat the daisies. Or other flowers.
Farming chips.
Never thought I’d get bored of reading about ancient beer.