Nibbles – Page 468 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

September 13, 2007September 13, 2007

COGENT has a new web site

New web site for International Coconut Genetic Resources Network (COGENT).

September 12, 2007

Studying wild sunflowers

Rare wild sunflower gets the treatment.

September 12, 2007

The bottom billion

Fair trade: charity to keep the poor producing the crops that made them so?

September 12, 2007September 12, 2007

Agriculture policy in Kerala

Kerala proposes traditional agriculture to promote food security.

September 11, 2007

Animal genetic resources

Final report on the Interlaken conference on animal genetic resources.

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