ICARDA and partners have organized an international conference on Food Security and Climate Change in Dry Areas. Plenty of agrobiodiversity on its menu, no doubt. It starts tomorrow, and you’ll be able to get a blow-by-blow account on the CGIAR’s climate change blog, Rural Climate Exchange. And possibly here too, but we’ll see.
Bring on the meta-meta-analysis of organic agriculture’s benefits
Whether or not organic food brings nutritional benefits over conventional food has been a matter of considerable inquiry and debate. The issue came to a head last month when a study commissioned by the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) concluded that there is no evidence of nutritional superiority.
Now, however, a review published in the journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development has said drawn wildly different conclusions.
Oh, this will run and run, you mark my words…
Vote for your favourite nutrition innovation
The finalists of the Improved Nutrition Solutions Through Innovation competition are up on Ashoka’s Changemakers site. One project promises that a “native rainforest food for school lunches improves child health while motivating reforestation.” And another wants to produce nutritional supplements from Moringa. It may not be enormously innovative, but I personally like Gardens for Health best, because it has the least of the silver bullet about it, and the most agrobiodiversity.
Gardens for Health enables people living with HIV/AIDS to improve their nutrition, health, and treatment adherence through sustainable agriculture. GHI provides access to land and patient capital for community gardens, seeds and tree seedlings for family home gardens, technical assistance in sustainable agriculture and nutrition, and market linkages
Go vote. You have until 8 February.
Does germplasm documentation need a social networking makeover?
The story so far:
John Cho is a plant pathologist and taro breeder at the University of Hawaii. A few days ago he posted a youtube video on his Facebook wall. It shows some very successful trial results from the Dominican Republic. The experiment in question is the evaluation for taro leaf blight resistance of some hybrids from Dr Cho’s breeding programme. Unfortunately, the interview with pathologists Drs Graciela Godoy and Miguel Martínez of the Instituto Dominicano de Investigaciones Agropecuarias y Forestales (IDIAF) is in Spanish, and John doesn’t speak that language. So he asked his Facebook friends to help, and one of them, an agronomist from Puerto Rico, sent him a translation.
But it doesn’t stop there. A discussion develops. Here it is, reproduced verbatim, time stamps and all, with the kind permission of the participants:
John Cho – Muchas garcias, looks like 3 of my taro hybrids are very tolerant to taro leaf blight in the Dominican Republic. That is great! Let’s hope that IDIAF will start breeding for tolerant materials with Bun Long attributes.
January 22 at 4:44amJohn Cho – Carlos, I checked to see what hybrids corresponded to the tolerant ones mentioned by Miguel and they are the following: H2 is 2002-21f, H4 is 2000-109, H6 is MS3. I think that I also sent those 3 to you for trials as well.
January 22 at 4:54amCarlos Emilio Ortiz-Malavé – 21f did well here, MS3 grew too slow to be considered in the afirmative. 109 was not among the ones we received in the the first lot. Ill b checking If I have it among the ones you sent May 2008. I ran out of $$ for evaluations, but Im asking for permition to continue. I let you know on the results of these actions.
John Cho – Carlos, the genetic background are the following: H2 or 2002-21f = India x [Pwetepwet x Maui Lehua]; H4 or 2000-109 = [Red Moi x PH15-11] x Maui Lehua; H6 or MS3 = Maui Lehua x Sushi. Background for the parents are the following: India = a variety collected by Vincent Lebot in 1991 from the marketplace in India; Pwetepwet = a Micronesian line tolerant to TLB; Maui Lehua = a hybrid variety selected from a cross between 2 Hawaiian varieties (thought to be a cross between Piialii and Lehua Maoli); Red Moi = a Hawaiian variety; PH15 = a TLB tolerant variety from Papua New Guinea; Sushi = a TLB tolerant variety from Micronesia.
Yesterday at 3:36amCarlos Emilio Ortiz-Malavé – Thank you John for the information, part of which you provide me for the Res. Note under evaluation. I should stress that among the Hawaiian Hybrids we tested 19F was by far the best adapted -really the best regarding over all horticultural performance- although 21F did well. Did you sent 19F to de Dom. Rep.? This will be my choice as parent for crossing to Lila-BunLong
18 minutes agoCarlos Emilio Ortiz-Malavé – John; Im wondering if 109 at the Dominican Republic is the same genotype as 19 in Puerto Rico (that is, with an “0” missing between 1 and 9. Thats because this 109-19 wast among the best performers. And because looks to me that we should have the same genotypes. Illl check the original documentation and be back with you.
about a minute ago
And so on. Now, my question is this. What is likely to lead to more use of a germplasm collection: this kind of open-ended discussion, or tables of accession x descriptor results?
Just asking.
Maize god appears on radio
Jeremy has just contacted me from London saying that today’s artifact on the BBC’s A History of the World in 100 Objects series is none other than a Mayan statue of (one of?) the maize god, Hun Hunahpu. 1
In Mayan mythology, the maize god was decapitated at harvest time but reborn again at the beginning of a new growing season.
You can read all about it, and listen to the programme, online. I’m sure this will not be the last agrobiodiversity-themed object to be featured on the programme.
