- USAID and partners to probe African goat breeds for performance measures.
- FAO sings the praises of its seed fairs in South Sudan.
- Bioversity’s banana genebank gets a big write-up.
- Prunus africana, the aged gentleman’s friend, could also be the Kenyan farmers’ friend. In about 40 years time. If we start now.
- And speaking of domestication, efforts to tame Panicum turgidum as a new forage grass are under way.
- It wasn’t industrialisation that made English food bad, no matter what a Nobel Laureate may think.
- All that #abdchat, just in case you missed it live.
Nibbles: New genebank, Urban ag, Cassava, Justice, School gardens
- Good news from Russia: A genebank in the permafrost. Yup, another one.
- Good news from Guatemala: Urban gardens for health and wealth.
- Good news from West Africa (which we know is not a country): magic cassava.
- Good news from Brazil: the World Congress on Justice, Governance and Law for Environmental Stability will prevent empty promises being made at Rio+20.
- Good news from the US: the Edible Schoolyard Project is online with scads of fun stuff for children and their teachers everywhere.
Russia sees benefits in joining the International Seed Treaty
A very brief announcement on The Voice of Russia website says that Russia “is planning” to join the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Deputy Minister of Agriculture Alexander Petrikov explained that Russia will benefit because it will “acquire access to samples of 22 food and 29 feeding crops, which it needs for its food security.”
Our Man who Knows the Treaty Inside Out says that genetic resources “under the management and control” of the government are automatically included in the Treaty. 1 So the rest of the world benefits by getting access to Russia’s holdings that meet those conditions. But, there’s no obligation on the host to maintain plant genetic resources.
“They can let them wither and die,” said Our Man. So don’t hold your breath for Pavlovsk.
Nibbles: Mopani, Svalbard, Chestnut blight, West African eats, Megareport, Fungi, Smallanthus, Innovation, MSB video, Pacific bananas
- No more mopani worms in Zimbabwe. Luigi distraught.
- More tosh on Svalbard. Nobody distraught.
- Chestnut blight threatens UK chestnuts. Castanophiles distraught.
- The oily charms of West African cuisine. Did someone say “oily”?
- Another big panel of the great and the good has issued a deafening report; Gordon Conway, panellist, tells us “How to create resilient agriculture“.
- DFID fertilises Vietnamese mushroom farms. Kept in the dark and fed manure?
- Yacon spotted in Malaysia. Just ask for snow lotus fruit.
- The World Bank has published a Sourcebook on Agricultural Innovation. So can we all go home now?
- Step inside the Millennium Seed Bank. A video.
- ProMusa disentangles Pacific bananas, the better to conserve them.
Nibbles: Cassava value addition, African food project, ITPGRFA, Filipino bananas, Plant Cuttings, Seed schools, Refugee gardens, Fisheries double, Cherry blossoms
- Projects I should probably know about but had never heard of, no. 37: Cassava: Adding Value for Africa (C:AVA).
- Projects I should probably know about but had never heard of, no. 38: African Food Tradition rEvisited by Research (AFTER). Mopane left unvisited, though, alas.
- More from the ITPGRFA Secretary Down Under.
- From genebank to farmers: bananas in the Philippines.
- Things are looking up: there’s a new Plant Cuttings out.
- We should all go back to seed school. Hey, just tell me where.
- Family gardens for refugees. And for urban folk in Ethiopia.
- Learning from the past in order not to repeat it, Vol. 88: Sustainble fisheries. Repeating it anyway, Vol. 565543 coming all too soon. No, wait, here it is…
- It’s that time of year again, isn’t it. Spring. Bah, humbug.