Information

April 4, 2011

Diversity everywhere

We cannot be the only ones to have noticed that in the past couple of weeks there has been a spate of papers on different aspects of the link between plant diversity and ecosystem functioning:

Needless to say, we’re working our way through that little lot, so you wont have to. More soon. Unless, that is, someone out there wants to do the honours?

April 4, 2011April 4, 2011

Nibbles: Buffalo, Future plants, Thai rice

The International Buffalo Knowledge Resource Service has a website. No, really.
Plants for a Future website includes crop wild relatives. No, really.
Thai jasmine rice trademark pirated. No, really?

April 4, 2011April 4, 2011

Just a quick follow-up to the rhyming couplet on water-related stresses in the just-published Brainfood. The Center for Hazards and Risks Research (CHRR) at Columbia University, which we have mentioned here before in connection with tsunami risk, also has data on Global Drought Hazard Distribution.

With a little R-related effort by Robert ¹ you can get a Google Earth file, which looks like this for Asia. ² I’ve also added MODIS fire hotspots for the past 24 hours, merely because I can. That would be the little fire icons.

And that means you can mash up drought risk with germplasm origin (from Genesys, say), in this case from Chad as an example.

Which is a great thing to be able to do because as we have just had reconfirmed by our friend Dag Endresen, the origin of germplasm allows you to make some predictions about its performance.

April 1, 2011April 1, 2011

Nibbles: Cardamom, FIGS, Descriptors, Haiti

Cardamom scrutinised.
A Lifeboat to the Gene Pool. Our friend Dr Dag “provides some of the first experimental evidence to support the FIGS concept”. With slides.
Descriptor lists are important, says Bioversity today. No joke.
An investigation, quite possibly partisan, but that’s the point, into emergency seed aid to Haiti after the earthquake.

March 31, 2011March 31, 2011

Nibbles: Gardening, Seed Swap, Mapping, Animal Genebank, Rice, Seed Treay, Nanocellulose, Camels, Bread, food Security

Gardening is good for you. It’s official. And they didn’t even measure nutrition.
European seed swap in Brussels.
More fun for mappers; Training Kit on Participatory Spatial Information Management and Communication. h/t CAPRi
Australian animal genebank under threat.
Filipinos ♥ IRRI.
Big write up of Seed Treaty‘s recent Governing Body meeting in Bali.
Wired magazine goes nuts for bananas and other fruits as sources of better plastics.
Camelicious! The worlds first large-scale camel dairy farm.
Food strikes in ancient Egypt. They’ve been revolting for more than 3000 years.
Nice round-up of how indigenous communities in Colombia are protecting their food security.

Category: Information

Diversity everywhere

Nibbles: Buffalo, Future plants, Thai rice

Mapping drought risk

Nibbles: Cardamom, FIGS, Descriptors, Haiti

Nibbles: Gardening, Seed Swap, Mapping, Animal Genebank, Rice, Seed Treay, Nanocellulose, Camels, Bread, food Security