- Picture guide to West African plants. Includes agrobiodiversity!
- Iowa State Agronomy podcasts. Some cool stuff. Check out the one on “Modeling Seed Germination Over Time to Decide When to Regenerate Seed Lots in Long-term Storage.”
- A “formal global program to develop subnational agricultural land-use statistics“? Riiiiight.
- GFAR meeting on sustainable use of agrobiodiversity says “[w]e need to initiate solid and inclusive actions to build concerted and practical actions on sustainable use.” Well they do say actions speak louder than words.
- Researcher “trying to remove the perception that hackneys are ‘half-crazed.'” I’d rather pay to save them if they were crazy, but that’s me.
- Romaine: germplasm to breeding lines. But to cultivars? Private sector to pick up the slack.
- Crops not mentioned among species that save our lives.
- Saving sacred groves in Ethiopia. By building pit latrines. Well why not?
- Brazil nut spread by people.
- A trade-off between species and genetic diversity? Say it
ain’t so! - Today’s iconic species threatened by climate change is the baobab.
- An Egyptian archaeobotanical blog.
- Botanic gardens can threaten biodiversity.
- Nature has (or had, it’s a couple months old) a supplement on nutrigenomics.
The way things were
Mr El-Sayed Mohamed El-Azazi, Executive Director of the Egyptian Deserts Gene Bank, has posted a comment to one of our previous posts about the looting of his genebank. It includes a link the following presentation on what the place looked like before the fateful day. The call has gone out for help replacing lost equipment. One can only hope it will be heeded.
Nibbles: Food prices, Wheat breeding, Potato Park, Mead, Peanut processing
- Is the World Producing Enough Food? The NY Times has the answer(s).
- Aussies trying to get to grips with salinity through breeding. Very cool, but maybe they should just stop growing wheat and think of some other crop?
- Potato Park potatoes to be parked in the Bóveda Global de Semillas de Svalbard.
- You know what those naughty Vikings used to say: “Let there be mirth, mead and fornication!”
- Adding value to peanuts in Bolivia. KIT video.
Effects of looting of Egyptian genebank on film
We’ve heard again from El-Sayed Mohamed El-Azazi, who is Executive Director of the Egyptian Deserts Gene Bank at the North Sinai Research Station. This time it’s a video of the effects of the recent looting, which he sent to our colleagues at Bioversity International. He confirms that the tissue culture and molecular labs have been destroyed, as well as part of the herbarium, and all computers stolen. But also that the seeds are still ok in the cold room, as you can see towards the end of the video. El-Sayed suggests in his commentary, which is for the most part a sad enumeration of equipment destroyed or stolen, that the looters were perhaps afraid to go into the cold room, and that’s why they left it unharmed.
Egyptian Desert Genebank from Crop Trust on Vimeo.
Nibbles: Asparagus, Phosphorus, Goats, Chocolate
- Peru exporting water it doesn’t have, hidden in asparagus.
- P summit takes peak phosphorus seriously; will anyone else?
- Goats are us. New ILRI effort in India and Mozambique.
- Who ground the chocolate? Rachel puts cacao in perspective.