- Systematic, large-scale national biodiversity surveys: NeoMaps as a model for tropical regions. The Neotropical Biodiversity Mapping Initiative (NeoMaps) provides good estimates of species richness, composition and relative abundance, in about 1 month of fieldwork per major taxonomic group and about US$ 1–8 per sq km. Now to do something similar for crop diversity.
- Insights into potato innovation systems in Bolivia, Ethiopia, Peru and Uganda. Rapid appraisal of potato innovation system by CIP et al. reveals differences among countries, but significant role of CIP across countries. Roles of farmer organizations and input supply companies limited everywhere.
- Population genetic structure of in situ wild Sorghum bicolor in its Ethiopian center of origin based on SSR markers. Significant differentiation among populations, despite long-distance seed movement and introgression.
- Assessing declines of North American bumble bees (Bombus spp.) using museum specimens. Half of the species are declining.
- Is naked barley an eastern or a western crop? The combined evidence of archaeobotany and genetics. Well, it used to be western too, up to the Bronze Age. Now mainly eastern.
- Crop protection and conflict mitigation: reducing the costs of living alongside non-human primates. A diversity of strategies for coping with malevolent biodiversity.
- Conserving biodiversity in a changing world: land use change and species richness in northern Tanzania. But, would you know it, pastoral grazing threatens other mammals.
- Mapping from heterogeneous biodiversity monitoring data sources. Could be interesting when folks get around to mapping agricultural biodiversity by smart phone.
- Sustainable management of planted landscapes: lessons from Japan. They planted trees, then neglected them because imports were cheaper, and now they’re paying some kind of price.
- Aquaculture: a newly emergent food production sector—and perspectives of its impacts on biodiversity and conservation. Mixed …
- Protection strategies for farmland birds in legume–grass leys as trade-offs between nature conservation and farmers’ needs. Cut high for succesful skylark nests with minimal impact on milk.
- Optimizing lentil-based mixed cropping with different companion crops and plant densities in terms of crop yield and weed control. Mixtures might be better, especially with wheat and barley.
- Role of eucalypt and other planted forests in biodiversity conservation and the provision of biodiversity-related ecosystem services. They can provide an opportunity for forest restoration, but it will take some rethinking. The mother-in-law will be pleased.
- Influence of Sources of Seed on Varietal Adoption Behavior of Wheat Farmers in Indo-Gangetic Plains of India. You need to get the message out if you want your improved varieties adopted. Can’t imagine you’d need a multinomial logit model to figure that out.
- Pastoral nomadism in the forest-steppe of the Mongolian Altai under a changing economy and a warming climate. As transport costs go up, and goat numbers increase because of cash from cashmere, mobility decreases and overgrazing results. A traditional way of life becoming unsustainable before your eyes.
- Species-rich dung beetle communities buffer ecosystem services in perturbed agro-ecosystems. Functional redundancy is not redundant after all.
Nibbles: Tree diversity, Cacao strategy, IFPRI strategy, Caribbean strategy, Mango conservation strategy, Olive migrations, African cassava, African Striga, Ecosystem services, Model plant
- Oh gosh, it was Tree Diversity Day and nobody told us.
- Bioversity catch up with their own cacao strategy.
- And IFPRI has a new one for you to comment on.
- Caribbean agriculture gets another signed document to help it along. No word on whether agrobiodiversity featured.
- Mango conservation gets organized. But not to the extent of an RSS feed, alas.
- California owes Morocco for its olives.
- Virus-resistant cassava imminent. Haven’t they been saying this for a while now? And is anyone thinking about what will happen to the virus-susceptible varieties?
- Push-pull in the news.
- The cost of everything, and the value of nothing, nature edition.
- What’s the value of Arabidopsis, then?
If I had a $ for every key to feeding the world…
…I’d have about enough for a pizza in Rome.
Theme of World Food Day is agricultural cooperatives. Today's "key to feeding the world." If I had a $ for every key… http://t.co/F58eEs9z
— AgroBioDiverse (@AgroBioDiverse) October 16, 2012
Having presented a hostage to fortune with this recent tweet, I thought I’d better check how many things have actually been put forward as keys to feeding the world. Unsurprisingly on this particular World Food Day, the most common answer is indeed agricultural cooperatives, but ranging into the nether regions of a Google search throws up the following eclectic, but alas short, list:
Crop quality
Integrated Pest Management
Biotechnology
Diets and nutrition
Russia’s small-scale organic agriculture model (sic)
Modern agriculture
Peasants
Trying variants such as “key to agricultural development”, “agricultural production” and “agricultural sustainability” broadens the range to include some old favourites, such as perennial crops, little-known crops, ICTs, research/extension and policy; even biodiversity finally makes an appearance. But perhaps the most interesting result is that only a very few items appear on more than one of these lists: farmers’ organizations, biotechnology and girls/women.
Anyway, it’s World Food Day, and you can get involved!
Nibbles: Animal abolitionism and not, Patents and not, Early agriculture, Brogdale, Soybean genes, Fancy phenotyping, Nexus principles, ICRAF databases, Transformation, Pest posters
- Animal domestication is murder. Will someone tell ILRI? And the Maasai.
- Indian home remedies at risk from nasty patents. I guess someone has been reading the Washington Post.
- Agriculture started as a response to the need for large amounts of beer for feasts. Can’t think of a better reason. All the more weird that it seemed to go pear-shaped in Britain, then, after a good start. Maybe everybody was drunk?
- The UK’s National Fruit Collection in the spotlight. So after that dodgy period, British agriculture did manage to get a grip, thank goodness. Probably for the cider.
- Multiple copies of a gene needed for nematode resistance in soybeans.
- PETting plants.
- “Ten principles to apply at the nexus of agriculture, conservation, and other land uses.” And almost anything else for that matter.
- Those ICRAF spatial databases explained.
- Bhoo Chetana in India and, admittedly under another name, in Peru. Transformation often means reviving old ways.
- Free posters of Top 10 plant-attacking nasties.
Abusing my position on Kasalath rice
OK, so we don’t have the clout or industry standing of The Financial Express, of Tropicana Tower (4th floor), 45, Topkhana Road, GPO Box 2526 Dhaka–1000, Bangladesh. But we have our pride.
So when we saw this paragraph in a major outburst of nationalistic pride concerning Kasalath rice …
Well, we were just a tad peeved.
I went online and fired off a very polite Letter to the Editor.
In your article BD gets IRRI recognition as origin country of rice variety Kasalath you describe the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog as “an IRRI blog”. As part-owner of that blog, I can assure you this is wrong. Please issue a correction and edit to state “Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, an independent blog”.
I look forward to your swift response.
Except that online security at The Financial Express leaves a little to be desired. Having told me to type the characters I saw into the box, it failed actually to display any characters. Nothing daunted, I found an actual email for the actual editor, and sent him the same message, with a PS alerting him to the problem with his security.
Back, snappy as anything, came an email, requiring me to reply in order to pass their stringent security checks. I did so. Back came another email, which I reproduce in its entirety.
Since then, not a word. Not one. After two whole weeks, the erroneous statement stands, an affront to our puffed-up sense of self-importance.
What to conclude? It isn’t as if we object to being associated with IRRI, just that, well, we aren’t.
Just as Kasalath isn’t actually a Bangladeshi rice. It’s just a rice that grows on land in that country, and some other countries.