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April 12, 2013April 12, 2013

Conserving an Indian banana every which way

I hope the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) won’t mind us reproducing in full a recent post on their Facebook page, entitled Geographical Indications to Elite Agri-Products. It’s just that I don’t know whether if I just point to the URL anyone else will be able to see it.

When you buy Dussehri mango, are you sure you have paid the price for real Dussehri that belongs to Malihabad region of Uttar Pradesh near Lucknow? Same is true for Nanjanagud Banana, Allahabad Surkha (guava), Nagpur Orange, Pokkali Rice from Kerala and many other agri-products belonging to a specified geographical territory. To protect the interest of consumers and producers Parliament enacted the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, which came into force in September, 2003. Agricultural, natural or manufactured goods originating from a definite geographical territory are registered under the Act and given the status of Geographical Indicator. The specific features or uniqueness is largely due to existing geo-climatic situation in the region of production. By now, more than 150 products have been registered as GIs including some of the renowned agricultural products. A survey by National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM) found that consumers are willing to pay more for agricultural GIs than non-agricultural GI products, therefore is GI for farmers? And how do we go further prior to registration and after registration?

Having just posted about that new wild banana subspecies from India, I guess it was inevitable that I would decide to take a few minutes to look into the “Nanjanagud Banana” a bit more deeply. It’s unfortunately not one of the case studies described in a very thorough paper on the Indian agricultural IPR system. ¹ But the variety known locally as Rasabaley certainly seems to have contributed to making Nanjangud, a town in Mysore district in the state of Karnataka, famous.

The fruit evokes tremendous appreciation for its taste among the older generation of the region. A variety of banana that offers a distinctive taste, “Nanjangud rasabale” has tickled the taste buds of people from far and wide.

However, despite its charms, and high cost, it was until recently described as on the way to disappearing.

The crop that was raised in around 500 acres just three decades ago has come down to around 100 acres now, mostly concentrated in villages of Kaarya, Devarasanahalli, Hullahalli, Kumbarahalli, Tagadur-Hanumanthapura and Hadinaru of Nanjangud taluk, near here. Just around 50 farmers showed interest to grow the crop, and many who tried gave up following losses. Devarasanahalli, which supplied large quantities of this banana variety, today has only 28 acres under “Nanjangud rasabale.”

Which seems to have been the rationale for slapping a geographic indication on it.

To ensure an independent identity that is exclusive to the fruit, the Department of Horticulture applied and registered “Nanjangud rasabale” in the Geographical Indications Registry of the Union Government during July 2005. Incidentally, “Nanjangud rasabale” along with “Mysore Betel” vine, a variety of betel vine and “Coorg Orange” were the first crop varieties in the country to be registered in GI registry.

It’s unclear to me whether this has worked. ICAR is silent on the subject, beyond that enigmatic question at the end of their Facebook post:

And how do we go further prior to registration and after registration?

How indeed. Good to know, therefore, that “Nanjangud rasabale” does seem to be conserved ex situ, according to MGIS, at India’s National Research Centre for Banana. It’s not, however, backed up at the International Transit Centre. Which is a pity, as there would be a pleasing completeness to the story if it were.

April 11, 2013April 11, 2013

A document much quoted, little linked to

A new review examines 20 years of monitoring initiatives in sustainable agriculture. It provides insights and tools to help stakeholders prioritise investments and manage competing development goals.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? I was certainly hooked, when I saw that on the DFID website, and then followed the echoes as they reverberated hither and yon around the internet. Only one problem. None of the pages which refer to or summarize the study actually link to it. None of them. Not even DFID’s. ² I know that because I really looked (I posted a frustrated Nibble to that effect earlier today), but most importantly because once Jeremy had helped me locate the document ³, I asked Google who links to its URL, and the list was very short. ⁴ So, for completeness, here is the document in question, which was produced by ICRAF. And if I hadn’t found it, I wouldn’t now know that Appendix 7 contains a discussion of “Information systems for biodiversity in agro-ecosystems” which I really didn’t need to see.

April 11, 2013April 11, 2013

Nibbles: Wine and climate change, Botanic gardens video, Forest restoration video, Deforestation live, European breeders meet, Yams and gender and insurance, N, Fish pots, Ancient ag books, Bioinformatics training, Sustinable ag

Blogging machine Tom Barnett worried about effect of climate change on his favourite tipple.
BGCI shell out for cool animation on social role of botanic gardens, and it’s totally worth it.
As also, but differently, are IUCN’s videos on forest restoration.
All the world’s forests, online, any day now, to monitor the opposite of their restoration.
Europe tries to stimulate innovation in plant breeding. By holding a meeting. Ah, but there’s a hashtag.
Development economists illustrate interesting point about gender and yam cultivation with photo of sweet potatoes.
The organic attitude to inorganic nitrogen.
Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers ate fish. Well I never.
Reviews of couple books on agricultural origins.
Need bioinformatics training? Who doesn’t.
ICRAF reviews efforts to monitor sustainable intensification. Somewhere. I can’t for the life of me find the actual document.

April 9, 2013

Promoting food security and nutrition with data and oxen

Sometimes disparate things demand to be linked together, no matter how tenuously. So this morning, I see first that the G8 countries are following up on their 2012 promise to build a New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition by holding a conference at the end of April on Open Data for Agriculture. The intention is to build a “global platform to make reliable agricultural and related information available to African farmers, researchers and policymakers, taking into account existing agricultural data systems”. And fine though that is, I can’t help feeling that helping African and other farmers to gather and share their own data might actually make a bigger contribution to food and nutrition security.

Then, it turns out that Howard Buffett’s foundation is supporting two ventures that promote food security in Africa (and elsewhere) a little more directly. First, there’s a spread in excess of 550 ha in Cochise County Arizona, where researchers can try ideas in an environment rather like the one that many African farmers endure.

The Cochise property focuses on farming as it’s done in Africa, where animals pull plows and most seeding is by hand. Two oxen will test equipment that will be used in different parts of the world. Researchers also use the oxen as they try to develop a new system to plant seeds at the same time the animals plow the land.

And Arizona isn’t the only place where Buffett is keen on draft animals. He also supports Tillers International, which teaches farmers around the world to use draft animals.

“What we’re doing now is conservation farming, an effort to provide more tools to deal with climate change,” [Dick] Roosenberg [Executive Director of Tillers International] said. “To me, the most exciting thing is the people we pick up from farms who are bright but not formerly educated and we put tools in their hands that allow them to do amazing things.”

“We see what someone is doing in South Africa and move it to Uganda, or Madagascar to Haiti,” he said. “We’re bouncing around the world as a catalyst.”

Conclusion: Sure it is good to have big governmental conferences to promote open data for agriculture. But would it hurt to do more in the way of actually working with farmers to improve their techniques and share successful approaches?

April 8, 2013April 8, 2013

Brainfood: Moroccan almonds, MAS in potato, Mexican maize market, History of agronomy, Malian querns, Hani terraces, Conservation modelling, Wild Cucumis, Pathogens and CC

Moroccan almond is a distinct gene pool as revealed by SSR. Ok, now what?
Molecular markers for late blight resistance breeding of potato: an update. Ok, now what?
Reconstructing the Maize Market in Rural Mexico. Not so free after all.
Why agronomy in the developing world has become contentious. Neoliberalism, participation and environmentalism. The answer? Political agronomy.
Millet and sauce: The uses and functions of querns among the Minyanka (Mali). Form depends on more than just function.
Landscape pattern and sustainability of a 1300-year-old agricultural landscape in subtropical mountain areas, Southwestern China. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Mathematical optimization ideas for biodiversity conservation. Fancy math works sometimes but not always. Wonder if it would work on the Hani terraces above. Or on Mexican maize for that matter.
Mitochondrial genome is paternally inherited in Cucumis allotetraploid (C. × hytivus) derived by interspecific hybridization. Not the chlororoplast genome though. Weird. But now what?
Migrate or evolve: options for plant pathogens under climate change. Or, indeed, both. But we need better models, and a better handle on what human interventions can do. Interestingly, pathogen diversity may well increase in some places.