Ethiopia’s Institute of Biodiversity Conservation (IBC) has a nice new website. Interestingly, it includes an interactive feature called BioForum. I was surprised, however, to see no reference to the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) in the section on access. Since Ethiopia has been a Party to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture since 2003, IBC should be using the SMTA for transfers of Annex 1 material, surely.
Pacific crops project
Specialty Crops for the Pacific Islands. Via PAPGREN.
Everybody loves quinoa
CABI on Bioversity on quinoa.
Agriculture after conflict
New New Agriculturist has feature on Agriculture After Conflict.
Do we need a scientific society for agricultural biodiversity?
SIRGEALC ended on Friday with a call for the establishment of a Latin American Society for Genetic Resources. Similar things have been suggested before, to no avail. The SAT21 conference recommended that an international society be set up, for example. That was seven years ago and I don´t think there´s been much talk about it since. What do you think? Do we need another scientific society?