Category: Markets

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Striga beater awarded 2009 World Food Prize

Dr Gebisa Ejeta of Purdue University has won this year’s World Food Prize for his work on sorghum breeding, in particular breeding for resistance to the parasitic weed Striga.

Dr. Ejeta’s scientific breakthroughs in breeding drought-tolerant and Striga-resistant sorghum have been combined with his persistent efforts to foster economic development and the empowerment of subsistence farmers through the creation of agricultural enterprises in rural Africa. He has led his colleagues in working with national and local authorities and nongovernmental agencies so that smallholder farmers and rural entrepreneurs can catalyze efforts to improve crop productivity, strengthen nutritional security, increase the value of agricultural products, and boost the profitability of agricultural enterprise — thus fostering profound impacts on lives and livelihoods on broader scale across the African continent.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person either. Congratulations, Dr Ejeta.

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Nibbles: Coca to cacao, BXV, Chinese gardening, Forest conservation, Amazon, Soil bacteria, Prairie, Genetics, Wildcats, Milk product

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Kenyan butterfly farmers flying high

94446896_acdf2bebfb_m.jpg The Kenya Forest Service is one of the forces behind butterfly farming projects around the country. According to the latest KFS annual report (which I found out about from ASNS), household incomes have really benefited from the project, mostly by exporting butterfly pupae to collectors and butterfly farms abroad, mostly in the United States and the United Kingdom. The report, launched last week, says: ((I have been unable to find it on the web; please help.))

The butterfly farming project based at Arabuko-Sokoke forests is one of the various initiatives aimed at involving forest adjacent communities in conservation through sustainable utilization of forest resources to improve livelihoods. The community appreciates the role that the project has played in the improvement of their household income and the positive contribution impacted towards conservation and management of the forest.

We’ve written about butterfly and silk farming in Africa before and it is good to know that these projects do seem to be working. The primary impact is to preserve the forest, by giving local villagers an incentive to keep it intact as a new source of income. Digging around a bit, I found some more useful resources. David Ngala at Wildlife Direct had a post about the Kipepeo project, which links to the project’s own web site. All very worthwhile.

Photo, of Papilio demodocus, by Matt and Kim Rudge, used under a Creative Commons license.

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Nibbles: Aphids, Chef wanted, Spanish ham, Obama, Neem

  • “The most closely related aphids were those feeding on the same host species, rather than those from the same geographic area.”
  • “I’m looking for a restaurant chef who would like to spend some time with me, learn something about my garden and the plants I’m growing, and experiment with cooking some dishes and possibly serving them to a small number of customers. ”
  • “It isn’t sustainable, it isn’t very natural, but it tastes great.”
  • Filipinos set up seaweed genebank and nursery.
  • Eat the View: the Story of the White House Garden Campaign.
  • “Foreign varieties of cotton and date palms have become a threat to local species here in Upper Sindh. …these varieties are affecting agriculture, forest and environment of Sindh, this threat can be overcome with the plantation of the Neem Tree.”
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Ampelographical errors good and bad

It has recently emerged that some Australian vine growers have been growing Savagnin Blanc (Traminer), an obscure French variety from the Jura, rather than what they thought they had planted, the considerably sexier Spanish grape Albarino. Apparently, CSIRO was sent mis-labelled cuttings by the National Germplasm Collection of Spain, a mistake that was spotted only after DNA work. It’s all explained, with what I suspect is relish, in an article in the New Zealand Herald. ((The problem seems to have surfaced in the press back in April, but we missed it at the time.)) Just the latest in a long line of trans-Tasman wine spats.

For the Australian winegrowers that have planted the 150ha currently in production in the country, this discovery is a blow as while there’s demand for albarino, the profile of savagnin – which they must now label wines made from these vines – is considerably lower.

As the article points out, not all such errors in identification are bad news.

Over a decade ago in Chile, another case of confusion proved more fruitful when what the Chileans had previously considered merlot actually turned out to be carmenere. This “lost grape of Bordeaux” was virtually extinct until it was found alive and growing very well among the merlot in Chile. It was a situation that inadvertently preserved the variety and led to the New World wine-producing nation to embrace it as a real point of difference and claim it as its flagship variety.

DNA fingerprinting should put a stop to this, of course. But as there are “5000 wine grape varieties with over 20,000 different monikers,” at least according to the article, it may be a while until cases of vine mistaken identity are things of the past.