Category: Information

Posted on

Questioning maps

As regular readers know all too well, I can’t resist a map mashup. So when I saw the latest data on deforestation in the Amazon, I fired up MapWarper and GoogleEarth and got to work.

And here’s a look at how recent deforestation in Brazil relates to the localities of past cassava collecting, at least as far as Genesys knows about it.

Now, I don’t know in what way deforestation (and associated disruptions) relates to loss of cassava diversity, but there’s a chance that it might. Could make an interesting PhD project for someone.

Anyway, encouraged by my pretty result, and remembering that I wanted to do something with some shiny new maps I had heard about, I next mashed up sorghum accessions and poverty in Burkina Faso. Here’s what I got.

What’s going on? Why are there relatively fewer sorghum accessions where poverty is higher (more red)? Are those places just harder to reach? Or do people there really grow less sorghum.

Again, I don’t know. But I think it would be interesting to find out.

All speculation welcome in the comments.

Posted on

Brainfood: RICA, AEGIS, CWR, Agrosavia, DSI, CRISPR, Tradition, SNS, Stability, Birds, Sparing, Genetic erosion

Posted on

Seeds going green

The Global Conference on Green Development of Seed Industries is organized by FAO as a means to provide a neutral forum for its members, partners, industry and opinion leaders, and other stakeholders to engage in focused dialogues on how best to make quality seeds of preferred productive, nutritious and resilient crop varieties available to farmers.

It’s online, 4-5 November.

Themes include, and I quote from the website again:

  1. Advanced technologies. The conference will review the advances in modern plant breeding technologies, emerging biotechnologies and informatics technologies and how they can be used safely and efficiently to enhance the delivery of genetic gains to farmers. Importantly, the conference will also facilitate a stocktaking of the available tools.
  2. Conservation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. The conference will be a forum for reviewing the state of knowledge of crop diversity, its conservation and availability, and its underpinning role in resilient and sustainable agri-food systems. It will further explore how the use of crop diversity may be positively influenced through a wide range of actions taking place in situ, on-farm or ex situ as part of an interdependent global system.
  3. Crop varietal development and adoption. The conference offers a unique opportunity to review select case studies to identify the drivers of success. Particular attention will be paid to the validated means for the deployment of scientific progress in nurturing environments that permit mutually beneficial partnerships amongst the multiplicity of actors.
  4. Seed systems. The conference will explore what has worked in transforming ineffective systems into responsive and dynamic ones that provide the solutions farmers need so that successes may be replicated. The roles of international seed trade and the requisite harmonization of legal frameworks will be explored, especially in the context of the solutions that work for the production systems of small-scale farmers.
  5. Policy and governance. The conference will be an opportunity to explore the enabling environment – at national, regional and global levels – for seed systems and the associated upstream domains of germplasm conservation and plant breeding.
Posted on

Your trusted source on genetic resources

Periodic reminder that if you’re into genetic resources — of crops, livestock or forests — you should consider publishing in Genetic Resources, especially if your work cuts across the usual silos.

Genetic Resources is an open access peer-reviewed journal publishing original research, reviews and short communications on plant, animal and forest genetic resources, serving stakeholders within and across domains. It is a platform to share domain specific and interdisciplinary knowledge and tools used by the global community of practitioners involved in monitoring, collecting, maintaining, conserving, characterizing and using genetic resources for food, agriculture and forestry.

And well worth having in your RSS feed of course. I dunno, are RSS feeds still a thing for anyone else?

Genetic Resources is inspired by the no longer existing Plant Genetic Resources Newsletter and Animal Genetic Resources journal and aims to fill the gap created by their discontinuation. Its scope and setup draw from the results of a survey conducted among stakeholders within the framework of the GenRes Bridge project. Genetic Resources is published by Bioversity International on behalf of the ECPGR Secretariat.