Category: Information

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Nibbles, Menu edition: Garlic, Potatoes, Meat, Tomatoes, Ramps, Bananas, Chocolate, Coffee, Pepper breeding, Local cattle in RSA

Well, that was fun.

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Discovering lost breeds in the US

I can’t help reproducing this fun piece from the latest e-newsletter of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

One of the most important parts of ALBC’s work is the “discovery” element. “Discovery” means that ALBC uses its networks and resources to find rare breeds – out there, in the fields, woods, and barns where they have quietly survived for generations. Often, these are unique strains or in some cases, unique breeds with unique genetics.

Most recently, ALBC was contacted by the state of North Carolina about populations of goats on several islands off its southern coast. State officials were considering removing the goats from the island, but they wanted more information about the goats before they did.

ALBC’s technical staff traveled out to sea and visited a few of the islands. The goats have been feral on the island for over 25 years. The goats were skittish, but ALBC staff was able to capture images that were later evaluated for breed type and characteristics. Further explorations are planned for the coastal NC goat population, but evidence suggests several herds of these goats may have Spanish influence or be a unique strain of Spanish goats. In the meantime, the state has called off the removal of the goats from the island until more information is obtained. Discovery of America’s hidden breeds is an exciting and essential piece of ALBC’s work.

I bet it is!

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Geographical Indications in the spotlight

Our friends at Crops for the Future do a nice job of summarizing the paper “The protection of Geographical Indications (GI): Generating Empirical Evidence at Country and Product Level to Support African ACP Country Engagement in the Doha Round Negotiations.” So I don’t need to, beyond referring to the bottom line: “GIs may entail trade-offs rather than the elusive “win-win” situation.” But I will say that I think it’s strange for the “Organization for an International Geographical Indications Network, … a Swiss-based NGO that represents 200 organizations and over two-million GI producers, from some 40 countries” to have a (fairly active) Twitter account but no RRS RSS feed from its website.

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Plant micro-reserves on Mediterranean islands

A while back we blogged a couple of times about plant micro-reserves in Crete, including one for an endemic crop wild relative. That work is linked to a similar project in Cyprus, and although no CWRs are on its priority list of species, I suspect some of the target habitats may contain some. I mention all this because the Cyprus project happens to have a Facebook page (which is interesting in itself), on which photographs have just been published of the setting up of notice boards at one of the micro-sites. 2

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Yale announces “Open Access” policy

We are happy to celebrate the announcement by Yale University that it is allowing “free access to online images of millions of objects housed in Yale’s museums, archives, and libraries” by reproducing this slide of

Produce of the native agriculture showing bananas, lemons, sweet potatoes, manioc, peppers, sugar cane, squash, lettuce, a spinach type of green, tomatoes, onion, potatoes, maize, and beans. In the center of the picture there is a plant used in black magic (red colored). 1954. Kamu Valley. Kapauku. (Mr. Leopold Pospisil’s collection of slides on the Kapauku Papuans of New Guinea.)

Plenty more in there of agrobiodiversity interest.