Nibbles – Page 431 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

February 6, 2008

Plant barcode gene identified

Plant barcoders finally find the gene.

February 5, 2008

Fina and flavour cocoa

More countries admitted to tasty chocolate club.

February 5, 2008February 5, 2008

New book on globalization

Vermeer’s Hat illuminates the birth of global trade, with agricultural products to the fore. Need to read.

February 4, 2008

Talking Plants

NPR’s Talking Plants blogger is in the Amazon.

February 4, 2008

India slams biopiracy

Indian Council of Agricultural Research wishes to close stable door on “theft” of biological resources: bolted horses unavailable for comment.

1. Swapping maize for indigenous crops won’t fix African food systems designed around markets and policies that still favour a narrow range of crops.
2. Cassava is both a food security fallback and a commercial crop in Uganda, but disease, climate change and declining diversity make its conservation an increasingly urgent form of insurance. But what about the markets and policies?
3. When livestock and crops fail, Ugandan pastoralists draw on wild plants for food, underlining how much food-system resilience still sits outside the formal agricultural system, with its markets and policies.
4. The Morton Arboretum is using living collections and genetic research to help the threatened butternut tree cope with changing conditions.
5. Webinar discusses global approaches to seed provenancing and transfer zones, useful for anyone who wants to move native plants without moving the wrong genes. Butternut very interested.
6. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Frozen Zoo preserves genetic material of plant and animal species that may disappear, from DNA to cells to organisms. Butternut volunteers.
7. New Indian facility combines ex situ fish conservation with community aquaculture. Good model for much of the above?
Published on October 6, 2026