Danny Chamovitz is hosting the latest Berry-Go-Round blog carnival at The Daily Plant. Lots of cool stuff, go see for yourself.
Mexican maize biodiversity documented
Via El Cuexcomate, news that CONABIO now has information on the maize races of Mexico on its website, including photos and distribution maps. It’s all part of a huge project to document native maize diversity (including the wild relatives) which was stimulated by fears 1 about the influx of GM maize. And since we’re on the subject of maize, today also saw an informative post on pellagra, complete with very dramatic illustrations.
Sudanese sorghum by the numbers
The Plant Genetic Resources Unit of the Agricultural Research Corporation (ARC) of Sudan has just published a catalog of its sorghum collection. It mainly contains reams of characterization data, which of course will be easier to explore in their digital form, but it’s always good to have illustrations to go with the numbers. Would be great to see the data eventually make their way to Genesys.

AVRDC’s shiny new website
AVRDC has a nice new website. You can subscribe to a couple different newsletters, and also follow the institute on Facebook and Twitter. You can buy a porcelain coffee mug and donate money. And there’s a decent RSS feed at last. The first thing that popped up when I subscribed to it was, almost inevitably, a fact sheet on the baobab. Yet another fact sheet on the baobab. Incidentally, I know I’ve already nibbled this, but also newly online is CABI’s Plantwise Knowledge Bank, an “online resource with information for all involved in plant health.” Where, almost inevitably, you can get information on the baobab.
Nibbles: Taxonomic search, Genebanks in China, USA, Nepal, Scaling up, Bison
- Discover taxonomic names in files, websites, etc…
- Chinese genebank collecting wild species in Tibet.
- Touring a non-government genebank. And running another one.
- Not a community one, though.
- Everybody talking about scaling up. Here’s how you do it. Probably need the media involved, right?
- Scaling up did for the bison.