- “It is urgent to mainstream urban and peri-urban horticulture, and to recognize its role as a motor in food security and nutrition strategies.” Course it is.
- Top banana conference opens in Trichy, India.
- School grows more than food; pupils and money too.
- Ford has a great idea: Science Tourism. We’ve done a lot of that ourselves, but never categorized it.
- ICRISAT protects non-agricultural biodiversity shock.
- Cancun and agriculture: poised for success … imperiled … and finally, footnoted.
- Meanwhile, our pals at the Climate Change blog ask the tough questions. Answers on a postcard, please.
- Rice has “difficult” seeds, says Kew.
- Michael Pollan leads the charge for DNA Deniers.
- Popped rice in India, via Mexico.
- Obesity more dangerous to US national security than homosexuality!
- Four paradoxes on the ‘lazy man’s crop’.
Mashing up 3d trees and crop wild relatives
I’ve been exploring Google’s 3d trees thing a bit, to work out just how cool it is. I said in my previous post on this that it could eventually be used to document and virtually explore field genebanks (of coconuts, say, or breadfruit). But of course you can explore a few forests around the world right now, so I wondered if any crop wild relatives have been collected in any of these places.
The answer is, alas, no, at least for Surui Forest in Brazil, one of the couple of “wild” places for which Google currently has 3d trees (the others are urban areas). At left you can see the distribution of accessions of crop wild relatives in Brazil, according to Genesys. Unfortunately, none fall within the area for which Google has 3d data.
I did get a hit in GBIF for a cultivated cassava just outside the forest. But that’s not quite the same, I agree. Oh well, maybe we’ll soon have more data. 1
Nibbles: Disease, Tobacco, CGIAR, Food Security, Nutrition, Soil, Popcorn, Quinoa, Aegilops
- How to breed a better brassica.
- Kenya encourages farmers to switch from tobacco to food.
- The King is dead … Long live the King.
- A very long post about Challenges to Genetic Diversity and Implications For Food Security in South Asia.
- Plumpy’nut set free, more or less.
- Dirt, the movie — I’d like to see that.
- Real popcorn, Yaqui style.
- Quínoa andina podría cultivarse en desiertos del mundo. Don’t they have their own orphan crops?
- Red List assessment of nine Aegilops species in Armenia. New wheat wild relatives paper.
Nibbles: Australia, China, Turkey, Slovenia, Soybeans, Grapes, Consultation
- Australian breeders discover the joys of participatory breeding — for Oz farmers too.
- Chinese biodiversity symposium a huge success.
- Weird, and weirdly broken, GEF Small Grants Programme reports on a Turkish landrace project. Why here? Why now?
- “Biodiversity: why should we care?” Slovenia’s answers.
- Soybean ability to use iron affects its ability to use nitrogen. Full paper here.
- Missouri grapes to save the world. Show me!
- First ever Regional Consultation for the Strengthening, Conservation and Sustainable Use of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture in the Pacific Island Countries kicked off yesterday. Where are our people on the spot?
The revival of taro biodiversity in Hawaii, in film
This just in from a reader in Hawaii. Thanks, Penny.
The film short “Na Ono o Ka Aina; Delicacies of the Land” featuring Jerry Konanui, a Hawaiian, expert in the identification of traditional Hawaiian taro cultivars, and an inspiration in their recovery. This film is the work of award winning Hawaii-based filmmakers, Na Maka o Ka Aina. The film garnered awards at the Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Hawaii film festivals in 2009 and 2010, and the short was featured on National Geographic’s “All Roads Film Festival” in 2008. One way to protect local crop biodiversity — reinspire everyone — from farmers to researchers to students; especially within the community that once created that diversity. It’s in the numbers; the more old cultivars we recover and grow and the more who grow, the less risk of loss we will have. You can get a taste of the film short — and the ono (delicious) taros of Hawaii below.