Information

November 26, 2015November 26, 2015

A newsletter to conjure with

Well, I thought we had our finger on the agricultural biodiversity pulse, but this is a new one on us:

Agrobiodiversity@knowledged is a joint Hivos and Oxfam Novib Knowledge Programme initiated in 2011. This three-year Knowledge Programme aims to break through the barriers that limit the scaling up, institutional embedding and horizontal extension of practices that build on agricultural biodiversity for improved livelihoods and resilient food systems. At the heart of the programme is a global knowledge and experience community of organizations working on agricultural biodiversity with millions of farmers worldwide, where evidence and insights are generated, shared and tested. The knowledge programme aims to synthesize knowledge from a local to a global scale, conduct research on approaches and analytical frameworks that provide new perspectives on agricultural biodiversity and its role in resilient socio-ecological food systems, and improve horizontal and vertical knowledge flows towards positive change and transformation.

There’s a useful-looking newsletter too, though I’m blowed if I can work out how to subscribe to it.

November 25, 2015November 25, 2015

Nibbles: CC & crop diversity, Agrobiodiversity newsletter, Foley blog, Heirloom pepper, ITPGRFA PPT, Gobble gobble, Ancient DNA, Sunflower relatives, Leafy greens

FAO has guidelines for making sure climate adaptation plans include crop diversity.
A new agricultural biodiversity newsletter for your reading pleasure.
And a new blog of global sustainability issues from Jonathan Foley.
The Beaver Dam pepper back from the brink.
Nice set of slides summarizing the Plant Treaty.
The traditional Thanksgiving save-heirloom-turkeys story.
Farming changed people.
Crop elders?
Women speak out about traditional African veggies.

November 18, 2015November 19, 2015

NBPGR’s genebank dashboard takes a bow

Good to hear ¹ that the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources in India has a new online “dashboard” summarizing data from its genebank, one of the largest in the world. ²

dashboard

There is a separate PGR Portal for searching the collection, though apparently only on basic characterization data so far. Except for wheat, that is, where you can search for a long list of phenotypic characters.

Clearly lots of work going on lately at NBPGR on getting their data out there. But when will we see them on Genesys?

November 11, 2015November 11, 2015

Breeding locally for local cooks

I’m not sure if we’ve ever linked to the Culinary Breeding Network before. This is a bunch…

…of plant breeders, seed growers, fresh market farmers, chefs and produce buyers engaged in developing and identifying varieties and traits of culinary excellence for vegetable crops in the Pacific Northwest region.

It came to mind because they have a cool, very informative Instagram account, as you can see from a post from a couple of days back…

#tbt the #cbnvarietyshowcase With corn breeder Bill Tracy of Univ of Wisconsin-Madison and Maya Lovelace of Mae in Portland, OR at the corn table. In 2013, Bill began new efforts in developing non-sweet vegetable corns which now includes Chilean choclo corns (flint corn) and Mexican pozoleros and elotes. He is also improving many heirloom corn varieties for local production and identified two that have excellent corn flavor and nice texture – 'Early Golden Market' and 'Lindsey Meyer Blue'. Photo by @shawnlinehan with Bill holding his Chilean choclo (on left) and 'Blue Eyed Blonde' (on right) which @mayalovelace used in her featured dish.

A photo posted by Culinary Breeding Network (@culinarybreedingnetwork) on Nov 9, 2015 at 2:54pm PST

…and because of yesterday’s post here on how to measure diversity. As I tried to say at the time, sometimes, for all its faults, number of varieties can be a useful metric. And even when it’s not, the names of the varieties are often a lot of fun.

November 10, 2015November 10, 2015

Answering the big genebank questions

A couple of important conferences are coming up and, as readers know, we like to keep on top of such things. So if you’re going, and would like to blog for us, or are thinking of tweeting the proceedings, let us know. Some big questions are being pondered, so it should be fun.

First on the agenda is the Tri-Societies meeting, this year in Minneapolis, on 15-18 November. ³ With that, the conoscenti will know, goes the award of the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources, which on this occasion will be presented to Dr Paul Gepts, who I believe is an occasional reader of our blog. Congratulations to Paul, who will deliver a lecture entitled A More Intensive Use of Crop Genetic Resources? Hopeful Future or Business As Usual? The answer seems, perhaps not surprisingly, to depend on more and better data.

Then in January there is PAG XXIV in San Diego and its Genomics of Genebanks workshop. Particularly intriguing is a talk from our friends at the International Potato Center, who ask Are you getting what you ordered from your genebank? The answer to that question seems to be: not always, but we’re working on it. Somebody mention better data?