There’s also rice, for one thing. Check out the recent BBC video on the Eden Project: rice makes an appearance at about the 2:30 mark. A quick search of the website does suggest that agrobiodiversity is well represented in the Biomes. And you can definitely buy crop seeds in the shop. But I couldn’t find any references to crop wild relatives on the website, which seems a pity. Or have I missed something? Eden would seem to be a great opportunity for education and public awareness on CWRs.
Happy 150th birthday to the Missouri Botanical Garden
There’s a nice, informative piece on the history and achievements of the Missouri Botanical Gardens in the St Louis Post-Dispatch. It celebrates the garden’s 150th anniversary this year, very much focusing on the international research aspects of its work.
Leading those efforts is Peter Raven, the garden’s director since 1971.
“What Dr. Raven has done is establish a world-class research organization that’s dedicated to protecting biodiversity around the globe,” said Roger Beachy, president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. “His vision is global, and the garden’s work reflects that.”
You may remember a little post we did about the place last year on the occasion of its 6 millionth specimen.
Not only are garden scientists routinely discovering plants new to science, they’re also investigating plants to be used in new drugs and those that form the backbone of the world’s food supply.
Unfortunately there was not much more in the article about the plants that form the “backbone of the world’s food supply,” which I take to be a reference to work on crop wild relatives.
One tool the garden has developed that is assisting scientists do just that is the Tropicos database, which contains more than 3.5 million plant records, the world’s largest.
“If you want to preserve an ecosystem, you’d better know what plants you have,” said Rainer Bussmann, director of the William L. Brown Center for Plant Genetic Resources.
The Brown Center is where garden staff conducts its applied research, studying plants used for medicine, supplements, food and clothing. Among the plants garden staff have reviewed is the rosy periwinkle, which produces a drug shown to help children with leukemia.
Surely there was a better example than that old chestnut!
The Post-Dispatch also has a bunch of videos on the garden.
Nibbles: AnGR newsletter, Sheep conservation, Gardener biographies
- Animal Genetic Resources Information Bulletin 44.
- How the Sheep Trust was born.
- Map of British gardeners.
Kenyan butterfly farmers flying high
The Kenya Forest Service is one of the forces behind butterfly farming projects around the country. According to the latest KFS annual report (which I found out about from ASNS), household incomes have really benefited from the project, mostly by exporting butterfly pupae to collectors and butterfly farms abroad, mostly in the United States and the United Kingdom. The report, launched last week, says: ((I have been unable to find it on the web; please help.))
The butterfly farming project based at Arabuko-Sokoke forests is one of the various initiatives aimed at involving forest adjacent communities in conservation through sustainable utilization of forest resources to improve livelihoods. The community appreciates the role that the project has played in the improvement of their household income and the positive contribution impacted towards conservation and management of the forest.
We’ve written about butterfly and silk farming in Africa before and it is good to know that these projects do seem to be working. The primary impact is to preserve the forest, by giving local villagers an incentive to keep it intact as a new source of income. Digging around a bit, I found some more useful resources. David Ngala at Wildlife Direct had a post about the Kipepeo project, which links to the project’s own web site. All very worthwhile.
Photo, of Papilio demodocus, by Matt and Kim Rudge, used under a Creative Commons license.
CWR heaven
So you’re on holiday at a villa in Western Crete; blue skies, bluer seas, wildflowers, olive groves and fish so fresh it practically flaps its way onto your plate. But it isn’t enough. And before you arrived, your blogging compadre told you that a few kilometres down the coast was a micro-reserve dedicated to the conservation of Phoenix theophrasti, right at the western edge of its distribution.
“Hey,” you announce gaily. “Let’s go see the wild date palms a few kilometres down the coast.”
Jaws drop, sniggers are suppressed, knowing glances exchanged. Agricultural biodiversity has reared its ugly head, on holiday no less. ((And be warned; there’s more “what I did on my holidays” nonsense to come.))
Eventually, one of the company asks the dreaded question.
“Why?”
So you go into blather mode. Crop wild relatives. Narrow genetic resources. Problems of cultivated date palms. (What was the name of that disease that’s killing Deglat Nour?) Breeding cycles. Climate change. Are date seeds recalcitrant? Vital importance for the entire future of the whole of the Middle East and North Africa. Blather, blather, blather.
And they buy it, yes! To humour you, but still. So off you wend along narrow, beautiful mountain roads, detouring for three hours to get a flat tire fixed. And there in the car park of the taverna where you stopped for coffee, locally-grown papaya and raki — at 11.30 in the morning — while the puncture was being mended, is a sign about the micro-reserve for Phoenix theophrasti, which enumerates the threats, outlines the responses and acknowledges the sponsors, but fails to answer the “why?” question.
Refreshed, on you wend, past the monastery of the golden step, through olive groves sheltering biblical flocks of sheep in their shade and down a stony incline. Confusingly, a couple of houses boast tame date palms, and you’re forced to admit that those are not why we came.
Suddenly, there you are. An honest-to-God turquoise lagoon fringed by lunar volcanic rock that has remarkably sharp edges. A sign and, you have to admit, some pretty ragged looking specimens that are clearly very like date palms.
Off you scamper to document the find and alert your colleague. Snap, snap, snap.
Carob trees. Wild thyme alive with bees. Spininess abounds. CWR heaven.
You return to the company, which has also been scampering, documenting, and paddling in the lagoon.
“This is heaven,” says one.
You breathe a quiet sigh of relief.