- Another nail in the coffin of Cartesian dualism in conservation? Yeah, right. Oooooh, here’s another. What next? Conservation-vs-use to bite the dust?
- Now here’s a thing. Priority setting in conservation for plants in Turkey and sheep in Ethiopia. Compare and contrast.
- “Bad-ass eco warrior” quoted on … apples.
- Invasive species can be good … when they are sunflower wild relatives.
- Pests and diseases: “New solutions could include novel resistant cultivars with multiple resistance genes, suitable epigenetic imprints and improved defence responses that are induced by attack.” I’ll get right on that. And more from Food Security.
- Rare Ethiopian honey becoming rarer.
- Also rare are micro-breweries in Africa. Alas.
- Volcano bad for British diet. And Kenyan jobs.
- So let them drink camel milk!
- Conference on Sustainable Animal Production in the Tropics. Doesn’t sound like much fun? It’s in Guadeloupe!
- And, there will probably be photographs of bulls of “stunning scrotal circumference.” Convinced yet?
- “Rios won for his work promoting a return to more traditional farming techniques focusing on seed diversity, crop rotation and the use of organic pest control and fertilizers to both increase crops and improve the communist-led island’s environment.”
- Our friend Anastasia does Seed Magazine: “Until broader efforts to reduce poverty can take hold, crops with improved nutrients could be very important in reducing death and disease caused by nutrient deficiencies.”
Genetically engineered bananas work
Researchers in Israel reveal that several lines of genetically engineered bananas are more tolerant to the fungal disease black Sigatoka. This is interesting for lots of reasons. The variety they engineered, Cavendish, is practically the only variety in international trade (more’s the pity) so one could argue that this effort is protecting only those bananas enjoyed by relatively affluent consumers. It will not do much, other than as a proof of principle, for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on scores of banana and plantain varieties as a staple crop. Black Sigatoka is a menace, one of the reasons why conventionally-grown bananas receive more chemical fungicides than any other crop. But it could be argued that another disease, Panama disease Race 4, is currently a greater threat. It was Panama disease that wiped out the previous export banana, Gros Michel. And while there are fungicides against black Sigatoka, there are none effective against Panama disease.
But the thing I personally find most interesting about this research is my anticipation of the objections to it. None of the standard “scientific” objections can possibly apply, aside from possible effects on human health, which I imagine will be reasonably easy to test. I can’t wait.
Nibbles: Teosinte, Books, Striga control, Civet coffee, Frog poaching, Edible flowers
- How teosinte lost its shell. Not another Just-so story
- Search more than 450 publications from Bioversity International. Just-so!
- Push-pull solution to maize pests in Africa. What again? Yes, again! Just do it.
- “One time, harvesters sold her regular beans glued to unidentified dung.” And more weird food naughtiness.
- Flowers you can eat.
An Atlas of Global Conservation goes (partially) online
The Nature Conservancy is publishing an Atlas of Global Conservation . 1 Some of the maps are online, though not the one below, which I got from a slideshow over at the Washington Post accompanying an article on the atlas.
Why not, though? Surely, if someone is really going to buy the hardcopy version, they are not going to be put off by the fact that all the maps are on the internet. I left a comment to that effect on the Conservancy’s Facebook post announcing the atlas, and they very kindly got back to me saying that more maps will indeed eventually be made available online.
What’s that you say? Any agriculture? A map of centres of crop diversity to go with the above? The list of data sources is not encouraging. But I could be wrong. I’ll keep you posted.
Nibbles: Aubergines, Opuntia, Amazonian ag, Kenya, Swiflets, Coconut and Web 2.0, PROTA, Mexico, Fruit wild relatives
- More either-or stuff from the Guardian on the Indian GM brijal story.
- The USDA prickly pear cactus germplasm collection gets some exposure. And how many times can one say that.
- Much better title from Discover on that ancient northern Amazonian earthworks story.
- Kenyan foresters tell people to eat bamboo. Luigi’s mother-in-law politely demurs. On the other hand, she might like this.
- Swiflet farming? Swiflet farming.
- Really heated exchange on paper on coconut lethal yellowing in Yucatan develops on Google Groups. I love the internet.
- PROTA publishes expensive book on promising African plants. Promises, promises. NASA promised us the personal jetpack. Where are we with that?
- Nice summary of that Mesoamerican agricultural origins story we blogged briefly about a few days ago. So what exactly do you call hunter-gatherers who also grow crops?
- First International Symposium on Wild Relatives of Subtropical and Temperate Fruit and Nut Crops will be held March 19-23, 2011 in Davis, California on the campus of the University of California, Davis. Book early.