- How should Africa’s medicinal plants be managed?
- How can agricultural research be engendered?
- What makes a shrimp sustainable?
Not nibbles: on women, sweetness, reinventing the CGIAR, tomatoes and seed swaps
Notes from all over: In Vietnam, a woman working on the conservation of indigenous livestock breeds — Professor Le Thi Thuy — has won the 2009 Kovalepskaia Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. ILRI’s blog post on the award tells us more about Kovalepskaya (a pioneering Russian mathematician) than about Professor Thuy or the project she directs. But we’re here to tell you that pigs may be involved.
In Australia, a casual mention of sugarbag flies took me to a post about the Weipa mission in “North Queensland on the west side of Cape York, the pointy bit at the top”. There’s a lot more to this post than the heritage of honey and how to make good use of it; not as sustainably as you might imagine, in many cases. In any case, it is a great read.
In France, right now, and elsewhere at other times, the burning question on everyone’s lips: Are Gates and CGIAR a good mix for Africa? We’re not going to rehearse all the old arguments here — SciDev.net does that for us. But we might be even bolder and ask whether the new CGIAR will be a good idea not just for Africa but for the hungry everywhere. Maybe not …
In academe, an odd paper in Nature Genetics focuses on a single gene that can boost tomato yields by 60% or some. Sure, that’s not going to feed the world, but it might make ketchup supplies more secure. The press release casts the discovery as an explanation of heterosis, which seems like overegging the pudding, but perhaps that’s just me.
In the informal seed sector, two posts that illuminate a different way of spreading agricultural biodiversity. The Guardian (no, not that one, the one that “covers Prince Edward Island like the dew”) reports on a local meeting of Seeds of Diversity Canada. I wonder how many potato varieties there are on PEI. And over at Our Earth/Ourselves, Madronna Holden ruminates on How to feed the world. A big part of her answer: A Propagation Fair.
Nibbles: Interactive key, Cider tax, Drought screening, Egyptian genebank, USDA animal conservation, Homegardens, Bag farms, Soil movie, Breeding Vigna, Cereals yield gap,
- Got a Neotropical flowering plant to identify? Kew has what you need.
- New Labour goes out with a whimper, and a swipe at cider-makers.
- Drought Timing for Agronomic Screening wins a prize.
- “We’ve heard about the Gene Bank project which serves to preserve certain cultivars and seed specimens, but we don’t know much else about this project.” Par for the course.
- Meanwhile, another genebank does get decent publicity.
- Women and homegardens in Bangladesh.
- Bag farms in Nairobi slum.
- Review of Dirt! The Movie.
- Boffins this close to drought-tolerant cowpeas.
- “…actual grain yield in some regions is already approximating its maximum possible yields while other regions show large yield gaps and therefore tentative larger potential for intensification.”
- The wife is going to the 1st International Symposium on Tropical Horticulture. Jamaica? No, she really wanted to go.
Nibbles: ICUC as was, Rice in Africa, Gardens, Botanical news, Durian, Fish and climate change, Nutrition in India video, Viruses in sweet potatoes, CBD, Wild tomatoes, Forst-tolerant apricots
- Change at the helm at Crops for the Future. Best wishes to all concerned.
- African Rice Congress wraps up. Successfully, no doubt.
- Tell you Sacred Garden story. Go on then…
- Nigel Chaffey rounds up botanical news. The best of the kind, for my money.
- The art of eating durian.
- Bye, and thanks for the fish.
- DFID on undernutrition in India. Very short on specifics. Where’s the varied diets stuff?
- Gotta virus clean those heirloom sweet potatoes.
- Latest from CBD ABS negotiations in Cali. Anybody there want to give us the scoop?
- Endemic wild tomato relatives from Atacama Desert… I dunno…investigated I guess.
- Russian boffin grows apricots in Siberia.
Nibbles: Sheep genotypes, Farming Matters, African Rice Congress, Malawi food, Quinoa et al.
- Better sheep through information. From Australia, natch. Thanks, Dirk.
- New Farming Matters out. When did this ILEIA magazine change its name? Remains essential reading anyway.
- Some participants voice their expectations of the African Rice Congress.
- A traditional Malawi meal.
- Whole grain recipes.