Nibbles: CBD, Agroforestry, Rice, Soil interactions, Bumblebees, Chaco, Geoparks

Nibbles: Pavlovsk, Baobab hybridization, Jackfruit, Vavilovia, Cowpea education, Lead, Bees, Banana wilt, Dariy cows, Pavlovsk, Drylands, School gardens, Genetic diversity in botanic gardens

  • The value of Pavlovsk. Jeremy delivers a slap.
  • CIRAD on kinky sex among the baobabs.
  • “I had never heard that there were distinct varieties of the jackfruit, although of course such a thing was reasonable, so I naturally wanted very much to taste one.” Naturally.
  • Wild relative of pea gets a weird hybrid in-ex situ conservation treatment.
  • A Cowpea Story, an illustrative children’s book by Vicky Inniss-Palmer, tells the hopeful story of a cowpea named Catalina and her struggle to overcome illness and disease with the help of scientists. Meanwhile, scientists meet.
  • Urban gardeners, beware lead. And nurture your pollinators.
  • Reading this, anyone would think nobody had ever researched banana Xanthomonas wilt.
  • Improved dairying in Kenya.
  • Vavilov Institute’s comprehensive update on Pavlovsk.
  • ICRISAT to put in place new market-oriented strategy which will use a “systems perspective in setting our priorities to ensure that all important issues along the dryland agriculture value chain are addressed.”
  • Meanwhile, ASARECA asks for ideas on how to intensify one of those dryland systems in the face of climate change.
  • ICIMOD promotes herbal gardens in schools.
  • Botanic gardens get wrists slapped over their inattention to genetics.

Prizes for agrobiodiversity movers and shakers

Two of the recipients of the 16th Heinz Awards for “providing solutions to global environmental challenges,” announced yesterday, have agricultural biodiversity connections. Cary Fowler’s work is of course well know to our readers:

At a time of massive environmental change, it is an absolute necessity to preserve the world’s crop biodiversity. Lack of crop diversity threatens the world’s basic food security, and it is highly significant that scientists like Dr. Fowler work to strengthen inventories of plant genetic resources.

Gretchen Daily’s perhaps less so.

Dr. Gretchen Daily is a globally renowned scientist and Stanford University professor who is acknowledged for her innovative work to calculate the financial benefits of preserving the environment. Dr. Daily has advanced a remarkable new vision that harmonizes conservation and human development. Her work illuminates the many valuable benefits that flow from “natural capital” – embodied in Earth’s lands, waters and biodiversity – to supporting human well-being.

Today she also won a Midori biodiversity prize.

Much of Daily’s research seeks to get businesses thinking about the environment. In 2004, she published a paper showing that coffee plants located near forests in Costa Rica are more productive than other plants because they are pollinated by bees living in the forest. The bees boost the yearly income of the average farm by $60,000, she estimated.

Maybe the two recipients should get together and figure out how to get business to pay for genebanks. Congratulations to both.

Nibbles: Cancun, Maya in Haiti, Indian Food, Pavlovsk, Currywurst, Banana biofuel, Book, Radio, Beer, East African cattle breed, Climate change and altitude, Amazon, Lycopersicon, Pollinator plants, Phenology, Economics