Category: Information

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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. 1

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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.

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Landraces on display at JIC

The second issue of the e-newsletter of the Germplasm Resources Unit of the John Innes Centre (JIC), for Spring 2011, is out. It comes with a nice name-check for the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, for which we are very grateful. Always happy to spread news about genebanks.

On this occasion, I was particularly taken with the piece on the demonstration plot for heritage wheats, including landraces. This on the left, for example, is Blue Cone, “an old wheat cultivated often in the 17th Century through to the 1930’s.” The piece struck me because as I read it I had just finished writing yesterday’s post about things that can be done to promote the on-farm management of landraces such as Blue Cone. One of those things, according to the paper I summarized in the post, is to re-introduce materials from ex situ collections. Clearly, the demonstration plots at John Innes are part of such an effort:

As previously, the plots will be available for viewing by prior appointment either as individual or group visits. In addition, an open day will be organised where interested parties will have the opportunity to view the plots with a view to identifying any material of potential interest that they might care to grow and evaluate for themselves. This initiative will be publicised in the farming and local press. Anyone interested is encouraged to contact us to arrange viewing and inspection of the material with a view to requesting small quantities for their own evaluation following harvesting and processing.