Threats

December 4, 2012December 4, 2012

FSA takes over ICARDA buildings

Free Syrian Army fighters have, in their words on the video below, “liberated” ICARDA. Our thoughts are with the international staff, still working from different locations around the region (most of the genebank personnel are in Tunisia), and especially the local staff, trying to survive in and around Aleppo.

@AgroBioDiverse Luigi, don't get shocked. ICARDA facility has been looted. Cars are with FSA now. Watch this http://t.co/qB85xJhw #ICARDA

— Dr. Joshka Wessels (@joshkawessels) December 1, 2012

December 3, 2012December 3, 2012

Nibbles: Old rice, New quinoa, Fishy stuff, Cropland landscapes, Forest landscapes, Old seed, Superdomestication, Intensification

Youth compiles list of rare and extinct rice varieties of Assam. Maybe he should look at weedy rice too?
Meanwhile, American farmers are learning to grow quinoa, probably including some rare varieties.
The smelliest fish in the world. No traceability needed for that one, I guess.
Cropland getting mapped. Presumably including the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS). Help needed by both, by the way.
Follow the forest discussions at COP18. High on the agenda: what is a landscape? It’s what you study when you’re being holistic, no? Anyway, there’s got to be a connection to the previous links.
Boffins find a genetic marker for old seed. Will need to Brainfood this one.
Pat Heslop-Harrison breaks down superdomestication for you.
SRI gets a scaling up. What could possibly go wrong?

November 21, 2012May 2, 2014

Nibbles: Vegetables, UK funding, Oz funding, Oz genebank, Jefferson, Hawaiian food, Markets, Tree seeds, NUS journal, Geographic targeting, ITPGRFA, Arabica and climate, Protected areas, European farmland biodiversity, Sustainable use, Ethiopian seed video

Palestinian rooftop gardens. Including crucifers, no doubt.
Brits support work with rice and wheat wild relatives. Among other things. They’ll probably use some of these genomics things.
Aussies support sweet potatoes. HarvestPlus rejoices.
That new Australian genebank. Will it have any sweet potatoes?
The agricultural legacy of Thomas Jefferson. It doesn’t say here, but I bet he was into sweet potato.
Hawaiian menus. What, no sweet potato?
Forget biotech, the road to sexy agriculture is via the supermarket. Where you can buy sweet potato. Maybe even of the organic persuasion.
Or maybe better tree seeds. Even in the Nordic countries. Or the US. Is cacao a tree?
Plans for special edition of Sustainability on neglected crops. Like amaranth?
Geographic targeting reaches roots/tubers. Using this newfangled atlas? Or no?
Treaty and Consortium love-in filmed. Thanks for sharing. It’s all part of this CGIAR perestroika thing, no doubt.
What that Kew coffee extinction paper really said.
Protected areas need work. Especially for coffee (see above).
Yeah but protected areas is not the only way to go, and Europe now has a bunch of biodiversity indicators for farmland. I guess it’s all part of some big plan.
Policy brief on sustainable use of PGR. Or, as we used to call it, on farm conservation.
Which you can kind of see happening here.

November 19, 2012November 19, 2012

Brainfood: Spanish terraces, Flower patches, Population ecology, Maize germplasm use, Seed info system, Maize and CC, Medicago predation, Species richness prediction, Rice salt-tolerance

The genesis of irrigated terraces in al-Andalus. A geoarchaeological perspective on intensive agriculture in semi-arid environments (Ricote, Murcia, Spain). They were built very early on, on a specific soil type, by first burning the vegetation and then essentially inverting the soil profile.
Creating patches of native flowers facilitates crop pollination in large agricultural fields: mango as a case study. Sweet.
The ecology of plant populations: their dynamics, interactions and evolution. A whole special issue. Most intriguing is perhaps review of plant-pollinator interactions on the Galapagos. All very important for in situ conservation of crop wild relatives.
Diversity in global maize germplasm: Characterization and utilization. Three priorities: phenotyping, phenotyping, phenotyping.
Phytotracker, an information management system for easy recording and tracking of plants, seeds and plasmids. They could have used GRIN-Global, but I guess that doesn’t track plasmids.
Increasing influence of heat stress on French maize yields from the 1960s to the 2030s. Any day with maximum temperature above 32°C is bad, and their recent increase has led to yield stagnation. They are going to increase further, which means that the French are going to have to find a 12% increase in base yields by 2035 or eat less maize. Do they in fact eat any maize now? What countries are now like what France will be like in 2035?
Combined impact of multiple exotic herbivores on different life stages of an endangered plant endemism, Medicago citrina. IUCN says it’s endangered. Rabbits, mice and rats are important parts of the problem.
Estimating species richness: still a long way off!. Bummer.
New allelic variants found in key rice salt-tolerance genes: an association study. A couple possibly interesting mutations identified by EcoTILLING bunch of IRRI accessions. We shall see if anything comes of them. Actually, how will we find out if something does? I hope the info will go back into the IRRI genebank documentation system.

November 14, 2012November 14, 2012

Coconut talk

A commenter posted a link to an interview with Dr Richard Markham, a research programme manager for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, on the threat to the international coconut collection in Papua New Guinea. I’m sharing the link here in case you didn’t notice it in the comments and would like a slightly more sober assessment of the threat than has been available elsewhere. Listen as he fends off a sensationalising journalist. And for those whose bandwidth will not easily allow them to hear Dr Markham’s dulcet tones, there’s a full transcript.