Speaking of the CGIAR’s change process and its mageprogrammes, they’re now soliciting comments on the one on Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health, having previously done so for the one focused on “improving the productivity of livestock and farmed fish by and for the poor.” Not a bad idea, of course. Are we going to get an opportunity to do so for the “nixed” megaprogramme on agricultural biodiversity too? And why are we hearing about these consultations via FARA rather than more directly from the CGIAR? What CGIAR RSS feed am I missing?
Nibbles: Protected area management, Yam domestication, Ottoman cooking, Measuring rice drought tolerance, Proteomics, Lupinus, Areca, Jethobudho, Nutrition megaprogramme, Soil bacteria
- Concentrating management practices on conserving a particular plant species may have bad consequences for other bits of biodiversity. Lessons for crops wild relatives?
- Benin’s farmers ennoble wild yams.
- A Lebanese lunch is an educational experience. Right.
- Paddyomics video. Nothing to do with the Irish. It’s about how IRRI is automating, er, everything about its phenotyping.
- Tamarind’s environmental niche is, in fact, er, niches?
- Different wheat genomes generate distinct protein profiles.
- Phylogenetic relationships of a new Mediterranean lupin.
- Betel nut chewing endangers coral. Kinda. Traditional and all that, but an unpleasant habit nonetheless.
- Our friend Bhuwon and others tell the story of the participatory improvement and formal release of Jethobudho rice landrace in Nepal.
- CGIAR elicits comment on the Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health megaprogramme. Until August 1.
- Bacterial diversity boosts maize yields.
Announcing a symposium on Biodiversity and Sustainable Diets
The first announcement and call for abstracts for the International Scientific Symposium on Biodiversity and Sustainable Diets is out. The symposium will take place 3-5 November 2010 at FAO Headquarters, Rome. But that’s all I know because the link to the announcement on FAO’s website is broken. (I’m writing this on Saturday: hopefully they’ll fix it on Monday.)
Wednesday: The link now goes to a Word document.
Nibbles: Grain ID, Garlic ID, Funding, Pest control, Sorghum, Grains, Cowpeas
- How to identify small grains.
- Can you identify a garlic?
- “You can’t expect a starving person to save a tree.” I s’pose not. But is that any reason to endow a chair in conflict resolution and development?
- “A farmer needs to let the garden get wild in order to protect it from the wild.” Course she does.
- Sorghum a huge success in Kitui, Kenya.
- Field trip to a grower of old grain varieties.
- New cowpea varieties selling like hotcakes, FARA told. And the old cowpeas?
Nibbles: Cassava virus, Peru’s Potato Park, Marula, Taimen, Meetings, Cornish fruits and veg
- New cassava varieties saving Zanzibar. Good to hear, though as ever one worries about what’s happened to the local landraces.
- Alder’s photos of the Potato Park. Do follow her travels around South America in search of agrobiodiversity.
- Namibia looks for other marula products.
- Saving the taimen in Mongolia. That would be a fish. A mighty fish.
- Interesting Indian symposia: wild fruits; “lifestyle floriculture.” Oh, to have more information.
- “Gariguette strawberries are an old variety and are non-licensed.” Crazy, eh?