- Sheep grazing on natural grassland taste better and are better for the envioronment.
- Student goes around world looking for seeds. How’s it going, Adam?
Their enemies are time and money…
The (London) Times Life & Style (Women) section had a feature on the Millennium Seed Bank a few days ago and somehow or other we missed it. Slap wrist.
The jars of dried seed go into the cold store, an underground library full of sliding stacks of shelves, every one full of glass jars holding even tinier glass jars. The temperature is -20C but the air-conditioning system creates a further wind-chill.
In that room, the size of a corner shop, are seeds of 10 per cent of the world’s plants. Beyond is another, larger room that one day, Smith hopes, will hold the rest. Empty shelves stretch away into the gloom.
One quibble. The article makes the Svalbard Global Seed Vault sound like a purely Norwegian affair, which of course it isn’t.
Regarding the funding of the Seed Vault, the Norwegian government funded the construction of the Vault in its entirety (this cost $9 million), and will continue to fund the maintenance of the facility, for an annual cost of circa $150,000. The Global Crop Diversity Trust funds the operation and management of the Seed Vault, as well as the transport of the seeds from developing countries to the Arctic. This second component – the transport – is possible through our work with the United Nations Foundation, a partnership which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Fungi sorted
As part of a new conservation strategy, the UK is to merge two large fungal collections.
There are already 800,000 specimens of mushrooms, puffball, toadstools and micro-fungi kept in the Jodrell Laboratory at Kew, including the specimens collected by Charles Darwin. Some 400,000 collection from the CABI research institute will be added, including a specimen of Sir Alexander Fleming’s penicillin producing culture, 138 specimens of the potato blight organism and the key reference sample of the Dutch elm disease that changed the face of the English landscape in the 1970s.
I guess that must include both preserved and living material, but I could be wrong. What about doing the same rationalization for plant genetic resources collections? Well, one bit of agrobiodiversity at the time, eh?
Nibbles: Bees, Bourbon, Cattle, Ug99, Horses, Neanderthal, Bear, Organic, Flowers
- Bees? We don’t need no stinkin’ bees.
- “…a distinct product of America…”
- Friesians? We don’t need no stinkin’ Friesians.
- Kenya tests for Ug99 resistance.
- Iceland’s horses walk funny.
- Neanderthals ate snails.
- Bear meat? We don’t need no stinkin’ bear meat.
- Organic agriculture in China gets NPR treatment, survives.
- Rice? We don’t need no stinkin’ rice.
Nibbles: Foodways, Ecosystem services, Subsistence, Genebank
- Cajun squirrel crisps, anyone? Jeremy comments: “Burgoo that for a laugh”.
- An Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets? In the USDA? Pinch me!
- “In 2009 my plan is to grow a lot of things, like millet, groundnuts and sorghum, but my energy is waning.”
- “Noah’s Bin, will be the fourth largest of its kind in the world.” In Turkey, apparently.