Category: Neglected species

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(Not much) agrobiodiversity on display in Nairobi museum

The main building of the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi has had a facelift, courtesy of the EU. Pretty good job on the outside, but the new exhibits were a bit of a disappointment.

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There’s a big hall about Kenya’s animals, of course, and another series of displays about its cultures, arranged by life-stages (birth, youth, adolescence, initiation: you get the picture), though this includes very little about agriculture:

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But there’s nothing at all on the country’s ecosystems and protected areas, and nothing on its plants, at least inside the building (apart from a display of an herbarium specimen in the small hall describing the museum’s history). There is a little botanic garden dedicated to medicinal plants (arranged by family, the wisdom of which is debatable), but this misses the opportunity of describing the Amaranthus on display as not just a medicinal but also a nutritious traditional leafy green (see my next post):

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However, the entrance hall does have a terrific display of cucurbit diversity:

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These bottle gourds are used by the Maasai and other pastoralists to store water, milk, blood, and mixtures thereof. Here’s a close-up:

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Underutilized plants policies unpacked

Agrobiodiversity policy wonks will be delighted that the recently-morphed Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species (GFU), in cooperation with the Genetic Resources Policy Initiative (GRPI), has just come out with the snappily titled “An overview of the international regulatory frameworks that influence the conservation and use of underutilized plant species.” You can download it from the Bioversity International publications pages, along with a separate publication, “The role of policy in the conservation and extended use of underutilized plant species: a cross-national policy analysis.” Other, country-specific GFU policy studies are also available.

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Nibbles: Health, Fungi, Health, Pollan, Organic

  • Nobellist praises biodiversity, ignores food.
  • TED video on world-saving mushrooms.
  • God: “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yieleling seed; to you, it shall be for meat.“
  • Pollan: “Vote with your fork, for a different kind of food. Go to the farmer’s market. Get out of the supermarket… Plant a garden… Declare your independence from the culture of fast food.”
  • Rodale Institute: “Yield data just by itself makes the case for a focused and persistent move to organic farming systems.”
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Go forth and grow halophytes

That seems to be the plea Jelte Rozema and Timothy Flowers make in a Science paper that’s just out. ((It’s behind a paywall, but you can read other people’s take on it at Mongabay and Wired.)) But, frankly, I found the paper disappointing, not least because it is short on clear recommendations. For example, what is one to make of this?

Because salt resistance has already evolved in halophytes, domestication of these plants is an approach that should be considered. However, as occurred with traditional crops such as rice, wheat, corn, and potatoes, domestication of wild halophytic plant species is needed to convert them into viable crops with high yields. Such a process can begin by screening collections for the most productive genotypes.

Are they telling us that domestication of new species is a more profitable approach than trying to breed salinity-tolerance into existing crops? I think so, in which case it would be an interesting view, but I’m not altogether sure that’s in fact the point they’re making. It could have been better phrased. I mean those first two sentences could be summarized as

Domestication of halophytes should be considered. However, domestication of wild halophytes is needed.

Not sure how the editors at Science let that one by. There was also no explicit reference in the paper to the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture and its genebank. Or to the possible role of crop wild relatives in breeding for salinity tolerance. All around, an opportunity missed.