Tourism

July 18, 2017July 18, 2017

Measuring the success of botanical gardens

Good to see Botanic Gardens Conservation International first technical review online, entitled Defining the botanic garden, and how to measure performance and success.

The definition part turns out to be a compendium of “criteria useful in defining a botanic garden.” The performance measures are rather long lists of indicators in the following areas, ranked by the percentage of correspondents who agreed with each measure:

Plant conservation
Scientific research
Collections
Horticulture
Public engagement and education
Sustainability and ethics
Business management and governance

Here’s the overall list:

Is there anything genebanks could learn from these?

July 14, 2017July 14, 2017

Nibbles: Dwarf rice, Ricestoration, Tarostoration, Biorepositories, Sustainable coffee, Cactus wars, Goaty portraits, Spandrels, Potato genebank, Forests and nutrition

The long and short of Green Revolution rice.
Restoring historical slave-worked rice fields in North Carolina.
Kinda similar, but taro in Hawaii.
There’s a bank for milk diversity.
Nice review of sustainable coffee production.
Opuntia: tasty but deadly (to some).
Handsome goat pix.
Festoons of fruits at the Farnesina: Jeremy is incensed.
Great new webpages for the CIP genebank.
Another report on a report that living close to forests is good for nutritional security, up to a point. But bushmeat?

July 11, 2017July 11, 2017

Nibbles: Visionary edition

New guy in charge Peter Wenzl gives us his vision for the CIAT genebank.
Agriculture and Irrigation Minister of Peru gives us his vision for the Peruvian genebank.
CIMMYT’s annual report gives us a vision of conserving maize in Guatemala.
Farmer Somashekhara gives us his vision for finger millet farming in India. And two makes a trend…
Retired agriculture expert Malcolm Hazelman gives us his vision for Samoan gardens.
A Tagorean vision of radical relocalization involving perennial edimentals.
Lots of people give us their vision for saving the wild apple.
IFPRI gives us their vision for the future of food in a changing world. With infographic goodness.
Natalie Mueller et al. give us their vision for reviving the forgotten crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex.
A vision of a planet protected in situ, in multiple ways. Yes, even pigeons. And yes, even cities, though agrobiodiversity neglected as usual.
A vision of permanent identifiers everywhere.
DNA gives us a vision of domestication explained. Yes, even sugarcane.

June 5, 2017June 5, 2017

Brainfood: CWR prioritization, CWR data, Yam core redux, Traditional landscape value, African rice domestication, Digital conservation, First farmers, Revived breed, Mitigation targets, Zoonoses, Population, JEB on legumes

Broadening the Base, Narrowing the Task: Prioritizing Crop Wild Relative Taxa for Conservation Action. Use socioeconomic value of crop, and potential usefulness and threat status of relative.
Germinate 3: Development of a Common Platform to Support the Distribution of Experimental Data on Crop Wild Relatives. Useful in determining the second of the above.
Re-defining the yam (Dioscorea spp.) core collection using morphological traits. Cleaning up the core.
“Things are different now”: Farmer perceptions of cultural ecosystem services of traditional rice landscapes in Vietnam and the Philippines. 73 indicators for the contribution of landscapes to culture, aesthetics, and local knowledge.
A single-nucleotide polymorphism causes smaller grain size and loss of seed shattering during African rice domestication. You want no shattering? You also get smaller seeds. Like it or edit it.
Digital conservation: An introduction. Brave new world… Special issue of Ambio.
The Genomic History Of Southeastern Europe. Souther Greek Neolithic farmers not same as other European Neolithic farmers.
Genomics of a revived breed: Case study of the Belgian campine cattle. Racial impurities are confined to a few farms.
Reducing emissions from agriculture to meet the 2 °C target. We’re doomed.
Conservation of biodiversity as a strategy for improving human health and well-being. By keeping animals and their nasty diseases away from people, we’re not talking communing with Nature here.
The interaction of human population, food production, and biodiversity protection. Minimise the interaction.
Nature’s pulse power: legumes, food security and climate change. Special issue of Journal of Experimental Botany on legumes. Eat up your beans!

May 23, 2017May 22, 2017

Nibbles: Participatory research, Plant breeding 101, Seed systems webinar, Hot pepper, Heritage Breed Week, Girardinia fibre, Chocolate high, Avocado history, Pollinator heist

Participate!
In plant breeding, that is.
And seed systems too, natch.
And you too could come up with the world’s hottest pepper.
Or help save a heritage breed.
Or sustainably harvest Himalayan nettle.
But careful not to get high on this chocolate hack.
Though binging on avocado is perfectly acceptable.
And for goodness’ sake, watch out for those Russians.