Category: Tourism

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Agrobiodiversity at the Ara Pacis

A sunday morning wander around the area surrounding the Piazza di Spagna ended with lunch at ‘Gusto and then our first chance to see the Ara Pacis, the Altar of Augustan Peace, in its fancy modernist cocoon. There is some controversy about the meaning of the left scene on the East wall — the so-called Tellus panel:

But there’s no doubting that it is a marvellous hymn to the bounty of agricultural biodiversity. You can see a cow and a sheep. wheat and poppies, grapes and pomegranates. Oh, and a sea serpent. No wonder one of the more solid interpretations identify this lady as Mother Earth.

More details here.

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Nibbles: Yeast, Weeds, Bioprospecting, Iraq, Pine wilt, Vietnam, GM, GM, Insects, Bees, Sheep, Fowl

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Cow Parade

There was an article in the local paper on Saturday which described how some of the exhibits at the recent Cow Parade in San Jose were a bit worse for wear and were being repaired. Well, I’d never heard of Cow Parade, but it sounds like fun. You can check out the entries for the San Jose event online. I just wish there was more phenotypic diversity on show, all the entries in the Wikipedia article look like basically the same breed.

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News from the road

Apologies for the light blogging lately, but both Jeremy and I are on the road and busy with other stuff. When last seen, Jeremy was on vacation in Maine, dealing what will probably be the mortal blow to its lobster population. And I’ve been in and out of meetings all week, but I’ve got a couple of days off now and may have time to catch up on the old feed reader.

This is a good place to do that. I’m visiting the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Turrialba, Costa Rica. They have a very pleasant campus in a spectacular area with a well-developed ecotourism industry:

CATIE has a botanic garden and an active seedbank for forest species. But it also has an interest in agrobiodiversity conservation, with very important field genebanks of cacao, coffee and peach palm, and a crop seed genebank specializing in local vegetables, maize and beans. More later.