The newsletter produced by the Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre (ABGC), a joint venture of Wageningen UR Livestock Research and Wageningen University, is unfortunately not available as an RSS feed, but I think it may well be worth subscribing to via email. The latest edition, for example, gives an update on the Dutch Heritage Sheep project, which points out that “[s]pecific equipment for semen collection was prepared in order to get the ram to mount a ewe in heat” and includes a helpful photograph.
Nibbles: Légumes oubliés, Mazes, Poultry, Business, Roquefort, Herb, Evolution, Benin, Egyptian pigs, New York food, Cabbage pest control, Cider making
- Francophones! Watch this. Report back.
- Geographers! Play with this. Global collection of crop mazes.
- Chicken fanciers and development officers! Read this (pdf). Increase assets, income and nutrition.
- Agro-business! Respond to this. Please.
- Cheese lovers! Watch this. Salivate.
- Chemists! Find out why Teucrium tastes like apple. Or is it that apple tastes like Teucrium?
- Females! Why are you horny?
- Farmers! Get information to adapt to climate change.
- Egyptian pig cull! Bad. No, good. No, bad…
- Brooklynites! Wallow in ethnic cuisine.
- Africans! Why bother with cabbage when you have so many much more interesting leafy greens?
- Scrumpers! Get thee to Eden!
Nibbles: Carotenoids, Banana diseases, Pigeons, Fisheries, Animal welfare, Camels in the Netherlands
- Evaluating tomatoes for carotenoids.
- Yet more on those banana diseases in Africa, this time from VOA.
- Stop maligning pigeons already.
- Six boffins on the fisheries crisis.
- The difference between dogs and pigs.
- Dutch find camels difficult. Camels no doubt return the favour.
Nibbles: Tree planting, Farm photos, Dandelion rubber, Ash trees, Qatar garden, Cairo cull
- India tree planter tells BBC his story. But what species?
- Photoessay on Irish farm, begorrah!
- The next rubber boom?
- A “modern-day Johnny Appleseed for ash trees.”
- Qur’anic Botanical Garden established in Qatar.
- Egyptians regret pig cull.
“Conservation for a New Era” highlights crop wild relatives
As I just nibbled, IUCN’s book Conservation for a New Era is out. It
…outlines the critical issues facing us in the 21st century, developed from the results of last year’s World Conservation Congress in Barcelona.
You can download the pdf. Agriculture has a chapter all to itself, starting on page 160. It’s nicely balanced, and worth reading in full.
If we hope to maintain global biodiversity and a reasonable balance between people and the rest of nature, then agriculture needs to be part of the conversation.
On the other hand, conservation has much to contribute to sustainable agriculture.
The high point for me was the stuff on crop wild relatives (and indeed livestock wild relatives), in particular their potential role in breeding for climate change adaptation. Genebanks are mentioned in passing, but the specific need for ex situ conservation in the context of a rapidly changing environment is not, alas, highlighted. Crop improvement is recognized as a key response to climate change, but perhaps the link to diversity is not as explicit as might have been warranted.
Effective responses to climate change will require changing varieties, modifying management of soils and water, and developing new strategies for pest management as species of wild pests, their natural predators, and their life-cycles alter in response to changing climates.
I liked the paragraph on the role of agrobiodiversity in plant protection, though it missed a trick in not mentioning the importance of the genetic diversity of the crops themselves. There is the expected reference to multi-storey agroforestry systems, but also less-expected mentions of perennial crops and underutilized crops. There’s sensible stuff on biofuels, too (though not much in the agriculture chapter, actually).
So, a step forward in the integration of agriculture and agrobiodiversity into the global conservation agenda? I think so, though it could have been a bigger one. At least agriculture seems not to be seen exclusively as The Enemy.