The Root Crops Agrobiodiversity Project in Vanuatu is inventorying varieties in various villages around the archipelago, and coming up with some astonishing results. 1 But, crucially, the work will not stop there. One of the objectives of the project is “to identify new varieties aiming at broadening the existing genetic bases and to propose them to producers and users, taking into account their needs and preferences.” So it’s more than the usual 3Cs — collect-characterize-conserve. There’s also creation, and dissemination, of new diversity, via seed production. That’s not that easy to do with taros and yams, but then, neither is conservation in conventional field and in vitro genebanks. It’s a very sensible idea to get the diversity increasing and moving around, rather than locking it up on research stations.
Nibbles: Bees, Honey, Fertilizers, Desertification, Nutrition, Decor, Mobile phones
- Bees under lots of “sub-lethal stresses.” I know how they feel.
- Hadzabe, who have been doing it for thousands of years, to be trained in honey production.
- Chinese farmers to be taught law of diminishing returns.
- “Workers at the Egyptian Desert Gene Bank in Cairo harvest and grow threatened desert species in its laboratory before replanting them to their native soils, hoping to revitalize threatened desert species.”
- Lao National Nutrition Policy puts nutrition at the centre of development.
- Economic botany and architectural fripperies.
- Got milk?
What the hell is going on in Ivory Coast?
I only ask because on the same day (yesterday), the BBC published a piece entitled “Ivory Coast’s sweet cocoa success” while the Financial Times had “Ivory Coast’s cocoa industry stares hard at a bleak future.” Maybe it’s my gloomy nature, and my plummeting faith in the BBC, but I believe the FT story more.
Invasion of the (edible) killer crabs
Two stories of invasives, one with a silver lining (perhaps), the other not so much.
The Chinese mitten crab has settled in the Thames, causing trouble of varied sorts. Bad. Boffins at the Natural History Museum think it can be harvested and sold in restaurants and special food shops. Good. I look forward to seeing participants at the Henley Royal Regatta dodging around the crab farms.
And from Utah — the Beehive State, ironically — the first sightings of Africanized “killer” bees. As if bees didn’t have enough problems already, what with their colonies collapsing and everything. Never rains but it pours.
LATER: And here’s another invasive you can eat.
LATER STILL: There’s a nice roundup of Colony Collapse Disorder at CABI’s blog.
Chocolate destinations
Here’s an idea that could have legs: chocolate tourism.
LATER: Good thing Ivory Coast is not on that list.