Category: Threats

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Nibbles: Chillies, Catfish, Blight, Beef, Svalbard, Biofortification, Agriculture and health book, Ahipa, GBIF, Pacific grape and nuts, Cassava and marriage, Amazon, Lost genebanks, Vietnamese food, Yoghurt

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More from that Los Baños fire

Bags of Rice Varieties on a Shelf at Genebank in the PhilippinesBags of Seeds at National Genebank in the PhilippinesContainers at Genebank in the PhilippinesFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory
Fire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory
Fire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources LaboratoryFire at the National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory
Fire at the National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory

Last Friday, under the upgrading project we mentioned that same day, the Filipino national genebank’s three transformers were adapted to handle the increased power demand. Early Saturday morning the power unfortunately failed. When it came back on, the fire started, perhaps due to a wiring fault. The 2nd floor was destroyed. That housed the in vitro lab, with duplicates of collections of banana, taro, sweet potato and yams which are also maintained in the field. The 1st floor is ok, except for some flooding damage from the fire engines, which affected chemicals and some equipment in the molecular lab. Some data has also been lost. Thankfully, there were no casualties. Our best wishes to the staff for a rapid recovery from this calamity.

CORRECTION: The 2nd floor of the building housed the molecular and cytological characterization labs, as well as the in vitro conservation unit and the documentation unit, library and reseach staff offices. The 1st floor has the in vitro research lab, seed research lab, morphological characterization lab and more research staff offices.

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Nibbles: Microbial diversity, Blog, Yams, Benefits of diversity, Ancient ploughing, Oman’s genebank, Lodoicea, Wheat senescence, Maize landrace marketing, Setaria flowering, Prisoner yams, Eating weed

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Any crops, or crop wild relatives, in the eastern Andes?

Well, of course there are. I mean, there must be. But we can’t be sure, at least not as far as this paper in BMC ecology is concerned. The abstract of Plant and animal endemism in the eastern Andean slope: Challenges to conservation tells us that “The Andes-Amazon basin of Peru and Bolivia is one of the most data-poor, biologically rich, and rapidly changing areas of the world” and goes on to say that the scientists “mapped ecological systems, endemic species concentrations, and irreplaceable areas with respect to national level protected areas”. It concludes:

We found that many endemic species and ecological systems are lacking national-level protection; a third of endemic species have distributions completely outside of national protected areas. Protected areas cover only 20% of areas of high endemism and 20% of irreplaceable areas. Almost 40% of the 91 ecological systems are in serious need of protection (=< 2% of their ranges protected).

Are any of the plants they studied wild relatives of crops? How about actual crops? Anyone able to comment?