Livestock

September 20, 2011September 20, 2011

Nibbles: Nigerian farmer speaks, Kenya meeting, Ecuador, Striga-resistant sorghum, Designer veg, Cottontail, Funding conservation, African adaptation

Why one Nigerian agriculture student will not become a farmer.
Meeting in Kenya on agricultural biodiversity, and other stuff, in October.
Ecuador and access to genetic resources (in Spanish).
“Scientists on the verge of releasing new striga-resistant sorghum.” Drought-resistant too! No need for push-pull then?
One wacky plant breeder’s story.
Attractive local bunny in trouble. Not what you’re thinking, get your mind out of the gutter.
Forest bonds in the offing. Genebank bonds, anyone?
Climate change adaptation in Africa: examples of genetic and agronomic fixes. Need both, I guess.

September 19, 2011September 20, 2011

Ugandan discussions on chickens

I could have sworn that we’d done more on the kuroiler chicken than the one Nibble that was, in the end, all I could find in our archives. But it is all too likely that, as Jeremy suggested, we talked about it at length and eruditely among ourselves, and then did nothing. It certainly sounds like us. Anyway, the announcement of a conference on said chicken is a welcome opportunity to set things right. And to register our standard hope that in the rush to bring in shiny new diversity, the rusty old diversity is not altogether forgotten.

September 19, 2011September 19, 2011

From sheep to crops

ILRI’s research report “Characterization and conservation of indigenous sheep genetic resources: A practical framework for developing countries” has a nifty flow diagram at the back which sort of summarizes what you have to do as a national programme to conserve your indigenous sheep breeds. I don’t think it would need to be tremendously dissimilar to be applicable to crop landraces. Any thoughts?

September 17, 2011September 17, 2011

Nibbles: Silver linings, Jaw jaw

Climate change good for British wine and fish. So that’s all right then.
CBD doing its thing(s) in India and Pakistan.

September 16, 2011September 16, 2011

So what about sericulture in Kenya anyway?

A short piece on Kenyan sericulture from 2007 is one of our most popular posts, ¹ with some 20 comments, the most recent one today, most of them asking for information on how to set up in the business. We have not been very good at replying to these queries as they have came up, and on the one occasion when we did we linked to pages at UNDP-Kenya, ICIPE and Biovision which are all now stone dead. So I thought I’d better clean things up a bit.

Rosemary Mwololo Nyamu pointed us to KARI’s National Sericulture Station-Thika in a comment, but unfortunately this very interesting-sounding place is nowhere to be found on KARI’s website. Not to worry, though. Rosemary has also provided a nice write-up on sericulture, and useful contacts, including her own, at Infonet-Biovision. I just hope this link lasts a bit longet than the others…