The first issue of the journal Food Security is online, with a foreword from Norman Borlaug, whose 95th birthday it is today. The papers appear to be free to download.
Revising the US Plant Hardiness Zone Map
“All gardeners are in zone denial.”
The zones in question are the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Plant Hardiness Zones, which show where different garden species are supposed to do well. Gardeners, of course, think they know better, and will always try to push that envelope.
Anyway, the current version of the Plant Hardiness Zone Map was done way back in 1990, and needed updating. So there’s a new one coming soon. It’s bound to be different, in places very different. A whole new set of recommendations for gardeners to go into denial about.
USDA is not describing what the new map will show, but outside experts say that the trend is for zones to shift northward. “Some places have definitely warmed, although others haven’t changed at all,” says Tony Avent, owner of North Carolina-based Plant Delights Nursery and an advisor for the revision.
You can’t do much with the current map online, but the next version will be downloadable to your GIS. It will also be more sophisticated, with better data, better interpolation and better resolution (800m):
The revised map draws on 30 years of data and uses a complex algorithm to factor in other variables that affect local temperatures, such as altitude and the presence of water bodies.
Will some of the USDA’s clonal repositories (field genebanks) find themselves in the wrong zone?
Research Into Use policy briefs online
DFID’s Research Into Use Programme has just come up with a crop of policy briefs on agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Several of them have agrobiodiversity relevance, if not themes.
- Policy Brief 1: Netting the benefits: the power of co-managing small fisheries (PDF 107 KB)
- Policy Brief 2: Future health: sustainable management of Africa’s medicinal plants (PDF 115 KB)
- Policy Brief 3: Forests, flows and water harvesting: replacing myths in watershed management (PDF 107 KB)
- Policy Brief 4: Improving farmers’ access to quality seed (PDF 117 KB)
- Policy Brief 5: Village forecasting of armyworm outbreaks saves crops (PDF 117 KB)
- Policy Brief 6: Credit for success: seed-yam production systems (PDF 115 KB)
- Policy Brief 7: Fighting storage insect pests in sub-Saharan Africa (PDF 119 KB)
- Policy Brief 8: Speeding dramatic change in rice fallows: low-input pulses where nothing grew before (PDF 107 KB)
- Policy Brief 9: Simple and successful: new seed-priming techniques boost farmers’ yields (PDF 116 KB)
- Policy Brief 10: Information and knowledge service markets: promoting rural innovation (PDF 291 KB)
Browsing RIU’s publications list, I was also struck by its Lessons from Pro-Poor Seed Systems in East Africa and Lessons from Plant Breeder and Farmer Partnerships.
More online historical images
Hot on the heels of of the illustrated Arabic botanical treatise I pointed to a few days ago comes a wonderful online exhibition about food, cooking and eating in medieval times from the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. Some great pictures of agrobiodiversity: crops and livestock, and their methods of preparation and presentation at the table. Via.
South helping North
Don’t despair if you haven’t much room — you can still get produce from plants grown in old tins and tubs on window sills or balconies.
That’s Faustino Reyes Matute from San Marcos, Honduras. Only one of the many subsistence farmers that are providing advice to allotment owners and others would-be farmers in Britain, people “who have turned to growing their own fruit and veg as the nation tightens its purse strings in the recession.” The Catholic charity Progressio is behind the great idea.