- 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.
Nibbles: 300, Linux seeds, Reef protection, Cold turkeys, Forest atlas, Perennials, Potato King, Apple art
- If you liked our piece of a couple years back on a remarkable Indian mango tree, you’ll love Bhuwon’s latest, fuller write-up.
- Open-source seeds? Isn’t that what the ITPGRFA was supposed to be ensuring?
- How fisherfolk in Indonesia protect the reef.
- Going wild turkey.
- Mapping Cameroon’s forests. Interactively, of course.
- A perennial roundup.
- Old Fritz and the potato. Maybe genebanks should take a leaf (or tuber) out of his book?
- “What constituted beauty, she wondered, in the scientist’s eye?”
Nibbles: Online portals, Hops, EU craziness, Turfgrass breeder, Seed rental, Swaminatham, CG genebanks
- Do you really need that portal?
- Brits say local hops are best. And who am I to argue?
- Weird statement on genetic resources from EU Commission. Clarifications gladly received.
- Even turfgrass has its heroes.
- Want to rent some seeds?
- A reminder from someone who should know that crops have biodiversity too.
- CGIAR Consortium talks up its crown jewels.
Nibbles: GRISP, Wheat for Africa, African ag, Future genebanks, GCARD, Zoonoses, Urban ag, Goat feed, ICRISAT breeding, Old corn & apples, Millets, Chocolate, Medlars, Yam beans, Black Sigatoka, CBD and ITPGRFA, Fish policy, Dog miscegenation
- Global rice and wheat in Africa tweetfests going on. And speaking of Africa, IFPRI has a big report.
- Speaking of rice, read about how our friends at IRRI are rethinking the genebank.
- Speaking of tweetfests, GCARD promises to be one too. More than a conference!
- From ILRI, who will no doubt be at GCARD, the downside of urban farming. And more doom and gloom.
- Speaking of urban agriculture, RAFI has a big report. (Oh, and agriculture is not the only thing that can be peri-urban.)
- Speaking of ILRI, this time in better mood, they’re feeding improved sweetpotato and cassava varieties to improved goat breeds.
- Speaking of improved varieties, ICRISAT has them too, of millets and the like. And they came from the genebank. And they were made by breeders, who have a newsletter, did you know? This is coming up because of the CBD meeting in Hyderabad, on which more later…
- Speaking of genebanks (the USDA ones in this case), it’s not only breeders who use them. (And speaking of USDA genebanks, here’s a story about the apple one.)
- And speaking of millets, they’re magic!
- Speaking of magic, that’s the only word for chocolate, isn’t it?
- Speaking of painting yourself into a corner, do yam beans go with chocolate? No? Well, maybe medlars do.
- Speaking of fruits (good catch!), Ecuadorians find disease resistance gene in Indian banana. Or at least banana named after Indian city.
- And that, I suppose, is why you need multiple ABS regimes, despite the confusion that may cause in Hyderabad and elsewhere.
- Speaking of ABS, interesting how that doesn’t really figure in fish policy discussions.
- And finally, a propos of nothing in particular, news of an unusual wolf-dog hybrid.