- 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.
Pavlovsk mainstay passes away
Leonid Burmistrov, Leading Scientist of the Fruit and Berry Crop Genetic Resources Department of the N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry (VIR) in St Petersburg, has died. From the recent announcement on the VIR website:
Leonid Burmistrov has made a significant contribution to the preservation of the threatened fruit and berry crop collections located at the Pavlovsk Experiment station of VIR. He gave 60 interviews to the Russian and foreign mass media. Thanks to his efforts, the collection continues to exist.
Nibbles: Policy, Nutrition, Education, Svalbard, Plagues
- Looks interesting: Assessing the impact of rural policy on biodiversity: High Nature Value Farming in Italy. Next Thursday.
- Gates Foundation’s Sylvia Mathews Burwell says Fortify Lives with agriculture and Nutrition. In full.
- Ugandans! Grow sorghum, get a scholarship for your child. Win-win. Cheers, Nile Breweries.
- Australian farmer tells all about Svalbard.
- ILRI speaks about climate change, livestock and plagues — The Economist listens. Respect!
Nibbles: Colombian coffee, Nutrition
- Who’d be a coffee farmer in Colombia?
- Farming First eats nutrition.
Latest on the Egyptian Deserts Gene Bank
We’ve heard more from El-Sayed Mohamed El-Azazi, who’s doing a PhD at the Desert Research Centre on seed conservation of Acacia spp. (“Ecophysiological studies for some Acacia species grown in Egyptian Deserts and its conservation in gene bank” is the title). You’ll remember that the place was looted a few days ago, and people are justifiably worried about the Egyptian Deserts Gene Bank housed by the institute.
El-Sayed is adamant that the seeds and field genebank are safe. However, it is clear that the laboratories have been thoroughly trashed, and a lot of equipment broken or taken.
Along with the computers went a lot of data. El-Sayed says he has lost some of his PhD data. And the genebank’s database seems to be gone, although the passport data is still around in hardcopy. There are about 1100 accessions in the genebank, of about 750 wild plant species.
Which brings up a point that’s maybe not often addressed. And that is that the desirability of safety duplication goes as much for the data about germplasm accessions as for the seeds themselves.
A Svalbard for data, anyone?