My good friend Cesar Azurdia has alerted me to the publication of the book Guatemala y su Biodiversidad. Chapter 9 focuses on agricultural biodiversity. There’s a lot of great stuff on homegardens, crop wild relatives, effects of climate change etc., all subjects very dear to our heart here.
Plant breeding resources brought together
The Global Partnership Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building (GIPB) has just released a new version of its Knowledge Resource Center for plant breeders:
One of the main objectives of GIPB is the establishment of a Knowledge Resource Center, including a shared information portal covering key areas such as training needs and opportunities, access to conventional and molecular breeding technologies and genetic resources, general information on breeding programmes and useful links.
Check it out.
Further dispatches from germplasm database hell
In which our hero Jeremy tries to trace germplasm collected by Vavilov, and is disappointed.
Ecology, with an Ö
Carnival alert! Oekologie, a blog carnival about, er, ecology, is back after a short break, hosted by Jennifer at Infinite Sphere. Lots (and lots) about birds, but also some aggish posts that joined ours in the section on Conservation and Social Responsibility. To whit:
- Sustainable Design Update deals with the betel nut story.
- Grrlscientist reviews a book about the fishing industry.
- She also blogs about invasive parrot species, not exactly agricultural, but pretty diverse and pretty.
Climate Change Gabfest
Our colleagues at the Agrobiodiversity Platform will next week launch an intense debate on how communities make use of agricultural biodiversity to deal with changing climates. But, mindful of their duty not to exacerbate the problem, they’re doing the whole thing online, with a moderated discussion forum. The discussions will take place over about three weeks, with an initial focus on sharing knowledge about what communities are doing, followed by ideas on awareness raising and finally some wrap-up and the preparation of a first-draft position paper.
I know I don’t have time to participate, but I’m sure we’d be willing to host summary reports from the group here.