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July 1, 2016

Plant Conservation and the SDGs

Dr Sarada Krishnan of the Denver Botanic Gardens kindly sent us this summary of the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation’s conference on Plant Conservation and the Sustainable Development Goals, mentioned yesterday on the blog. Many thanks, Sarada. If many readers want more details on one or two topics in particular, we can perhaps ask her for a follow-up.

The conference was attended by 140 delegates from 27 countries. Here is a summary of topics presented at the conference:

Botanic gardens can play a big role in conservation of crop wild relatives.
Plant conservation needs to have people at its center.
Simplify messages to reach various audiences.
Economic impact of invasives: the role botanic gardens can play (example of RBG Sydney with Wollemi pine and Phytophthora cinnamomi).
Importance of indigenous knowledge to plant conservation.
Update to the North American Botanic Gardens Strategy for Plant Conservation in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.
We need to promote more good news (rather than doom and gloom): spread our success stories #EarthOptimism.
Kew’s role in supporting the Sustainable Development Goals.
Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) implementation and other conservation topics in various countries (Brazil, South Africa, China, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Canada, Ecuador, Azerbaijan).
Capacity building (example of the Sud Expert Plantes programme (SEP2D) by France).
Access and benefit sharing for seed banking by the Australian Seed Bank Partnership.
The US National Seed Strategy developed by 12 US federal agencies.
Role of horticulture in plant conservation and lack of capacity in horticultural skills.
Conservation genetics tools.

Very intense two days with great variety of topics!

June 30, 2016June 30, 2016

Plant conservation boffins discuss the Sustainable Development Goals

Things have been a little busy hereabouts, what with one thing and another, so we seem to have neglected to remind our readers of the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation’s conference on Plant Conservation and the Sustainable Development Goals at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Shame on us. Anyway, participants have been quite busy on Twitter, so you can get a flavour of what’s been going on. The focus was on the role of botanical gardens in the conservation of wild plants, but agricultural biodiversity does seem to have featured at least once.

Ms Sutherland-issues with collecting seeds on indigenous lands in Australia-where do the benefits accrue? #gppc2016 pic.twitter.com/jrRZG5YhhZ

— Anukriti Hittle (@anu_hittle) June 29, 2016

Maybe someone can tell us more on that.

June 30, 2016June 30, 2016

Nibbles: Wild pig, Indicators, Ethiopian agrobiodiversity, Traditional crops, Purple haze, Fraises des Bois, Chef prize, Breadfruit, Sorghum nutrition, Moringa, NWFP, Barcoding, Arnold Arboretum

Warty pig saved by genomics.
So apparently there’s a Biodiversity Barometer. Via the Biodiversity Indicator Partnership.
Traditional crops survive, but under threat, in Ethiopian highlands. And a whole issue of Farming Matters on why it’s important that they do survive.
More on that purple wheat heirloom variety coming back from the brink.
Going back to the original European strawberry. No, I’m not going to make any jokes about that.
There’s going to be a Nobel for chefs. If they can make use of breadfruit, they’ll deserve it.
Yes, sorghum rotis can taste good. And they’re good for you.
Big Moringa shill makes case for next superfood :)
Did I already say that FAO’s Nonwood Forest Products Newsletter seems to have been resurrected? Do subscribe.
On my work blog, I say genebanks could be a bit more like supermarkets.
Collecting trees.

June 13, 2016June 13, 2016

Brainfood: Agricultural heritage, Unique maize, B4N, Flax core evaluation, Oca conservation, Ag expansion, Rose wild relative, Quinoa evaluation, Nepal seed systems, Amazonian domestication, Analysing germplasm data

Agricultural Heritage Systems: A Bridge between Urban and Rural Development. “…agricultural heritage systems can take full advantage of abundant funds…” Really?
Multi cob-bearing popcorn (Puakzo) maize: a unique landrace of Mizoram, North East, India. Would be nice to know how unique globally.
Enabled or disabled: Is the environment right for using biodiversity to improve nutrition? Maybe, in some places.
Orbitide Composition of Flax Core Collection (FCC). In other news, Canada has a flax core collection.
Farmer Perspectives on OCA (Oxalis tuberosa; Oxalidaceae) Diversity Conservation: Values and Threats. It’s the cultural value, stupid. And weevils.
The expansion of modern agriculture and global biodiversity decline: an integrated assessment. Fancy maths shows that if you assume that unabated agricultural expansion is bad in a particular way, you can come up with a model which spares land at a modest cost to per capita consumption, given decent investment in research.
Nuclear genetic variation of Rosa odorata var. gigantea (Rosaceae): population structure and conservation implications. Wild relative of domesticated rose shows lots of diversity and two distinct populations either side of a fault zone in China.
Worldwide Evaluation of Quinoa: Preliminary Results from Post International Year of Quinoa FAO Projects in 9 Countries. 19 sites, 21 genotypes, a few winners. But the real story is how difficult it was to get hold of the material in the first place.
Shaping Seed Regulation in Nepal: The Role of Networks, Community and Informality. The formal needs to recognize the informal. And vice versa.
Crop domestication in the upper Madeira River basin. Nice, brief review of evidence of domestication for a number of crops along one branch of the Amazon.
Analysing genebank collections using “R”: Making trait information widely available to users. NordGen takes genebank data analysis to the masses. And about time too.

June 11, 2016

Plant Genetic Resources: Our challenges, our food, our future

As predicted a few days ago, here’s Dr Mike Jackson’s report on that 2 June meeting on plant genetic resources organized by doctoral students at the School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham.

When I was asked to contribute a paper I had to think hard and long about a suitable topic. I’ve always been passionate about the use of plant genetic diversity to increase food security. I decided therefore to talk about the value of genebank collections, how that value might be measured, and I provided examples of how germplasm had been used to increase the productivity of both potatoes and rice.

If you have your own examples, leave a comment on Mike’s blog.