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March 10, 2011March 10, 2011

Maps of Russian agrobiodiversity online, again

We blogged about AgroAtlas some years back, but a big article in USDA’s newsletter gives us a welcome opportunity of pointing out again how cool it is. The much-awaited GIS layers are in a funny format, though, which I’d be interested to know how to convert to something that can be viewed in Google Earth.

March 10, 2011March 10, 2011

Nibbles: Micronutrients, Population, Opium, Nixtamalization, Chocolate, Seed swap, Dog domestication, Meeting, Biofuel failure, Mesquite

“Organic management practices appear to result in elevated levels of grain micronutrient concentration.” By no means the whole story.
Tom too takes The Economist to task.
Afghanistan’s opium growers. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Nixtamalization for the rest of us. More than you could ever want to know. Rye tortillas!
Chocolate began with leftover beer? Seems unlikely.
Take the fight to the monster’s lair. Swap seeds in Brussels. h/t Patrick.
Dogs or dholes? Yeah I didn’t know what they were either.
There was a workshop on “Seed System and Climate Change” in Bhutan a month ago.
Big biofuel project in Tanzania bites the dust. And the land they “leased,” what happened to that?
Ancient grinding holes. Might mesquite be another edible never domesticated?

March 9, 2011April 14, 2011

Historical agrobiodiversity photographs online

I’m not sure why I like old photographs of markets so much, but one reason may be because at the back of my mind is the thought that maybe photos such as the one from Uzbekistan in the 1950s at left and similar ones from 1920s Egypt could be used to gauge genetic erosion. Too bad the metadata for the stock imagery at National Geographic (where the Egypt photographs came from) doesn’t include date. Anyway, speaking of agrobiodiversity photographs from Egypt, the wonderful Saudi Aramco World also has some in its latest issue.

March 9, 2011March 9, 2011

Potato seeds or seed potatoes

It’s a curse, knowing (and caring) too much. Last week, we dutifully nibbled a Spanish-language report that seeds from Peru’s Potato Park were on their way to the Bóveda Global de Semillas de Svalbard. The BBC, equally dutifully, seems to have retailed the same story. But hang on. Are those true potato seeds, in which case I’ll just relax and go home? Or are they potato seed tubers, capable of safeguarding actual varieties, rather than merely a diverse sample of potato DNA? The BBC certainly suggests the former, by specifically mentioning one of the varieties by name.

I had always thought that named potato varieties do not breed true from true seed. so if seeds are being stored, then why bang on about varieties? And if it is seed potato tubers, which do preserve variety characteristics, why are they being stored at Svalbard, where they’ll die pretty quickly?

Someone put me out of my misery.

A greater curse is the curse of unreliable technology. This post was supposed to magically appear three weeks ago. It didn’t. I don’t know why. And I was on the road at the time. No wonder it evoked no response …

March 9, 2011March 9, 2011

Nibbles: Cloves in Zanzibar, Invasive species, Fingerprinting genebanks, Seed ownership, Pollinator photography, Columbids

Clovefield.
They Eat Invasives, Don’t They?
The Wrong Seeds.
Seeds of One’s Own.
Bee Photographs.
Clay Pigeons.