Information

May 12, 2009May 12, 2009

VIR at war

I’m going to have to take back what I said about English Russia. Just a couple of days after it featured old photos of Russian agriculture, today there’s more of agrobiodiversity interest. Sergei Larenkov mashes up images of modern St Petersburg with photos taken during the siege. Below is one of St Isaac’s Square. There are several others. It was a cabbage patch during the war. The building in the middle is — and was — part of the Vavilov Institute.

vir1
Compare it with the picture I took recently.

May 11, 2009May 11, 2009

Opposing the Egyptian pig cull

I posted my recent little note about the imminent disappearance of the Egyptian pig landrace called Baladi to DAD-Net, and it has generated quite a bit of feedback. The gist is that nobody thinks the cull is justified, and that conservation measures are urgently needed (freezing sperm and keeping it in liquid nitrogen and freezing or vitrifying embryos at the time of slaughter were mentioned). Especially since, surprisingly, the breed has never been properly characterized. An Egyptian researchers lamented this by saying that

characterization needs commitment and funds which are not readily available even for more economically important livestock species.

So that’s not unlike the case with crops, then. You can sign up to a petition to stop the cull.

May 11, 2009May 11, 2009

Another international day coming up

Don’t make any plans for 18 September: it’s World Bamboo Day. And it’s the climax of the VIII World Bamboo Congress in Thailand, which goes under the title of Bamboo, the Environment and Climate Change this year. If you don’t think bamboo is particularly important, read about the plight of a Bhutanese village. Via the INBAR website, via the new NWFP newsletter.

May 11, 2009May 11, 2009

Nibbles: Adam Forbes, Squash, Native Americans, Gardens, Buffalo, Pastoralism, Primula, IPR

Global seed searcher Adam Forbes check in.
Filipinos greet new squashes.
Smithsonian special feature on the American Indian. Not much agrobiodiversity, but still.
Reviews of a couple of interesting gardening books.
Asian Buffalo Congress 2009.
Policies that work for pastoral environments.
“Farmers are being encouraged to graze fewer, rarer animals, and that means the fields can sustain traditional wild flowers. It is a sweet-smelling plant and cattle and sheep love to eat it.” It is the cowslip.
Case studies on intellectual property in agriculture and forestry.

May 10, 2009May 10, 2009

Russian agriculture as it was in living colour

English Russia is an “entertaiment blog devoted to the events happening in Russian speaking countries.” Quite often fun but not, you would have thought, likely to feature much of agrobiodiversity interest. And you’d be right. For 99% of the time at any rate. Because there was a post a few days ago with truly amazing colour photographs of the Russian Empire from a hundred years ago, and many show farming products and activities. They’re by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, according to one of the comments, and he had a Library of Congress exhibition devoted to him in 2003, whose website is where it seems most of the images in the English Russia post originated. Well worth exploring. I wonder if some of these images could be used to compare with the present. For example, are these melons still to be found in Samarkand?