- Another view of peak phosphorus: there isn’t one.
- Worldwatch Institute offers “15 solutions to … a healthier environment and a more food-secure future”. h/t ILRI.
- From sorghum to maize, not your usual “top lady farmer“.
- Plant clinics thriving in Sierra Leone. Do the plant doctors ever prescribe agricultural biodiversity?
Food Slideshows
Two food slideshows for your delectation today.
One celebrates the orange-fleshed sweet potato and other nu-nutritional delights. Or, as Wired magazine puts it: “a visit to the laboratory of the International Potato Center in Maputo, Mozambique, where biofortification researchers are saving lives with starch”. Gabba gabba hey!
The other is from Foreign Policy magazine, which says: “The food in our mouths defines us in far more fundamental and visceral terms than the gas in our tanks or the lines on a map. So it’s not surprising that the most important questions of global politics often boil down to: What should we eat?”
Alas, time is pressing and so a detailed appreciation is currently out of the question, but both sites accept comments, and we’d be delighted if you would care to share any comments you do have here.
Nibbles: FIGS, Anitmalarials, PhD, Pecans
- Australian magazine overdoses on FIGS (Focused Identification of Germplasm Strategy) h/t Dag.
- World Agroforestry Centre says malaria-cure trees are going extinct. World Malaria Day is on Monday 25th.
- New PhD programme on Biodiversity and Society. h/t CFTF, who say it covers diversification and neglected crops.
- China loves US pecans, giving Tom an opportunity for some strategic analysis.
Conferences want you
Two conferences have put out a call for papers.
First up is the 1st Africa College International Conference on Food security, Health and Impact Knowledge Brokering, to be held in Leeds, England, from 22-24 June 2011. Full details at the conference website. h/t the CAS-IP blog.
And then there’s IFPRI’s conference on Increasing Agricultural Productivity and Enhancing Food Security in Africa, organized in conjunction with the African Union Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. It takes place in Addis Ababa 1-3 November 2011 and details are available via the IFPRI website.
Genebank data identifiers
Remember the big discussion about how to ensure that information about genebank accessions can be linked back to the accession itself? Our friend Dr Dag Endresen has written a handy guide to Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) as they might be used by genebanks. In addition to explaining how the system works, he points out that it might be a good idea for one organization to fork over the roughly USD1000 to register a top-level DOI name such as genesys. (Bioversity? The Trust? The Treaty? Is anyone listening?) That would not stop any other genebank flush with cash from registering their own domain, and it would provide something to the data providers at genebanks in return for their data. Dag discusses some other options on his blog, and I’m sure there’ll be lots of discussion there, or here, or some other place. Either way, the sooner some similar system is adopted, the sooner we can trace our collective way out of genebank database hell and satisfy the needs of those who want to link data to accessions.