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

The Food Crisis: Déjà Vu

It was a year that saw oil prices rise to levels that had never before been imagined. And the world witnessed a decline in world grain production that outlined the the pitfalls of depending on the surplus of a handful of nations for a world food reserve. Nations met to discuss “the food challenge” in the context of a “world of energy shortages, rampant inflation, and a weakening trade and monetary system…”

Nope, not 2008, but 1974. The Lubin Files has links to the speech Henry Kissinger gave to the UN’s World Food Conference.