We’ve been keeping a vague eye on Asian soybean rust ever since it was first found in US soybean fields in 2004. Truth to tell, there’s nothing like the prospect of disease-induced panic, fed by genetic uniformity, to give us a warm inner glow. So we’ve actually been a bit disappointed that as yet there have been no direct losses to soybean rust in the US. Of course, there have been economic costs associated with spraying fungicides, but that’s not the same. Today, with a teeny shiver of Schadenfreude, we bring you State has first loss to soybean rust, from the Mississippi Agricultural News.
Nibbles: Banana disease, Prickly pears, Pea breeding, Aquaculture, Bees, Soil microbes
- A letter makes some very important points about bananas in Africa. There’s a huge back-story to this, but we’re not going to go there.
- Prickly pear fruit chips. An opportunity beckons, for someone.
- Building the perfect pea.
- Half of fish farmed. But which half?
- Scientific American bee podcast.
- “…there is a whole world of microbes underground, associated with the roots of plants, that has yet to be analyzed.”
Nibbles: Chickens, Peppers, Treaty, Breadfruit, Preservation, Food systems, Adaptation, Yam multiplication
- Naked necked chicken in music video shock.
- Piment d’Espalette. Jeremy asks “What’s the big deal, really?”
- The ITPGRFA on CNN.
- Fiji to set up breadfruit genebank.
- Lacto-fermenting your eggplant and chrysanthemum petals.
- More on FAO’s Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems book.
- “Where farming communities have been able to maintain their traditional varieties, they are already using them to cope with the impacts of climate change.”
- Yam Minisett Technology pushed.
Marina of the Zabballeen does the rounds
We’ve blogged a few times about the plight of the Zabballeen — Cairo’s Coptic garbage collectors and pig-keepers — in the wake of the pig cull which was the Egyptian governments main response to swine flu. Now, via Treehugger, comes news of a movie about this embattled community: Marina of the Zabballeen. It seems to have done quite well on the festival circuit. If you caught it, let us know.
Reporting threats to agrobiodiversity: A modest proposal
Yesterday Hannes, à propos of something else, reminded me of a post I did a few months back about ProMED which asked the question “Why do we still not have an early warning system for genetic erosion?” Today I read about pestMapper — “[an] internet-based software tool for reporting and mapping biological invasions and other geographical and temporal events.” Whose objectives is basically to make a more participatory, Web 2.0-like ProMED. Coincidence? Maybe. Anyway, this is exactly the kind of thing we’ve been thinking here a “global genetic erosion threat reporting and monitoring portal” might look like. Any thoughts? An idea worth pursuing?
