Information

July 11, 2017

Creating a Global Seed Conservation Directory

This form will be used to populate an online Seed Conservation Knowledge Hub – a directory of facilities, individuals, and expertise in all aspects of seed conservation. Your participation completing this form is supporting the development of a tool that will benefit the seed conservation community. The information you provide in this form (apart from your contact information, unless specified) will be included in an online directory on BGCI’s website.

Now why hasn’t someone thought of this before?

June 30, 2017June 30, 2017

FAO rolls out agricultural apps

This just in:

FAO, along with several partners, is involved in the implementation of ICT initiatives in Africa. The majority of family farmers in developing countries live rural areas and in most cases don’t have access to technology and digital agricultural services. Through the use of ICTs, farmers have more access to information on markets, weather and nutrition. The Digital Services project is part of FAO’s Digital Strategy and is aimed at people in the field, local governments, community leaders and extension workers.

These are the apps involved:

Cure and Feed your Livestock
e-Nutrifood
Weather and Crop Calendar
AgriMarketplace

Maybe it’s not too much to hope for a genetic erosion early warning system after all? We could test it in Haiti.

June 28, 2017June 28, 2017

Help make Genesys better

I’ve often pontificated about Genebank Database Hell here, I’m sure to the annoyance of many readers. But we do have a chance to do something about at least one little corner of hell. If you want to do your bit, please take the Genesys user survey. Thanks!

June 26, 2017June 26, 2017

Brainfood: Banana GWAS, MGIS, Commodification and racialization, Native tree seeds, Tea in China, Potato in China, Indian eggplant, Rapid phenotyping, Ag & environment

Trait variation and genetic diversity in a banana genomic selection training population. You can use easy-to-measure traits as proxies for important but difficult-to-measure traits. Both of which will hopefully end up in…
MGIS: managing banana (Musa spp.) genetic resources information and high-throughput genotyping data. Very cool. So when can we expect the data in Genesys?
Heirloom rice in Ifugao: an ‘anti-commodity’ in the process of commodification. Calling a landrace a “heirloom variety” is just another form of capitalist oppression.
Race, Status, and Biodiversity: The Social Climbing of Quinoa. Not to mention racist.
To what extent are genetic resources considered in environmental service provision? A case study based on trees and carbon sequestration. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) afforestation/reforestation project design documents are often unrealistic about the chances of sourcing sufficient quantity and quality of seeds of indigenous species.
Diversity analysis on catechin genetic of wild tea plant from Yunnan province. They determine whether a variety is used for green or black tea.
Genetic differences between potato strains introduced from International Potato Center (CIP) and domestic potato resources by SSR molecular markers. The CIP varieties are quite different to the Chinese ones. But we kinda knew that.
SSR marker analysis points to population admixture and continuum of genetic variation among Indian landraces of brinjal (Solanum melongena L.). Brinjal gets moved around a lot.
A high-throughput, field-based phenotyping technology for tall biomass crops. Estimate plant height and stem diameter in sorghum, say, without leaving the office.
Comparative analysis of environmental impacts of agricultural production systems, agricultural input efficiency, and food choice. Better for environment to change dietary habits than production systems.

June 26, 2017June 26, 2017

Botanical gardenfest takes root

The 6th Global Botanic Gardens Congress of Botanic Gardens Conservation International is being hosted by the Conservatory and Botanical Garden of Geneva, Switzerland, starting today. Follow with #6GBGC.

Oh, and there’s also Plant Biology 2017 in Hawaii, with #plantbio17. So many hashtags, so little time…