- Caribbean coast of Colombia high in cassava genetic diversity. Shakira alerted.
- Costa Rica getting to grips with ITPGRFA. Not many people hurt.
- Fox News Latino has a dietician tell us about Inca foods. In other news, Fox News has a Latino bit.
- Plant Cuttings!
- Did you celebrate the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations? And does what’s happening with açaí qualify as plantations?
- The London Olympics backlash begins. If you don’t agree with all that, here’s how to make your own meadow. Or restore one. Any crop wild relatives in all meadow-making?
- Nice pic of squash diversity.
- Very geeky presentation on how sequencing the wheat genome is going to solve all our problems. If you can follow it, you’re already convinced.
- Floating plastic islands full of papyrus plants will save Lake Naivasha. I don’t know, but I’d sure like to see it.
A London botanical garden in trouble
It sounds as though the botanical garden of the South London Botanical Institute may be threatened by development. According to BGCI the garden has a particularly important collection of Rubus. The institute’s website mentions a Medicinal Border, Gerard’s Border, a Southern Hemisphere Area, and also that
British natives, ferns, scented plants, drought tolerant plants, monocots and unusual vegetables are also represented.
So some agricultural biodiversity is involved here, though I do not know to what extent the “unusual vegetables” and Rubus species, say, are to be found in other genebanks and botanical gardens. In any case, if you think losing this garden would be a bad idea, you can sign a petition. Fingers crossed.
Nibbles: Yams, Wild tomatoes, Plant breeding, Bamboo
- Yams heading for trouble. What to do?
- Learn something from wild relatives, like they’re doing with tomatoes?
- Go for a totally new plant breeding paradigm?
- I know, let’s all go out and celebrate World Bamboo Day!
Nibbles: Irish Famine book, Breeding for adaptation, Neolithic diets, Randy Thaman, Ecological Babylon, IPR for smallholders, Botanical gardens
- Don’t underestimate the importance of a new book on the Irish Famine, despite the weird construction used in praising it.
- Impossible to overestimate the importance of crop breeding for climate change adaptation. And would you like a presentation with that?
- Cannot underestimate the diversity of early Neolithic diets. No, wait.
- Difficult to overestimate the contribution made by Prof. Randy Thaman to the conservation of agrobiodiversity in the Pacific. One of several honoured by IUCN for services to conservation.
- Fed up with linguistic tricks? Well, too bad, because here’s another one. It turns out you can use agricultural biodiversity terminology as examples to explain what’s wrong with ecology.
- Here we go again. Easy to underestimate the importance of IPR legislation in enabling smallholders to conserve agrobiodiversity.
- Plain impossible to list the x best botanical gardens in the world.
Nibbles: Red List, Açaí, Edible forest, Horticulture, Heirloom seed bank, Malnutrition journal, Tea breeding, Speak!
- Can cultivated species get their own Red List? Stefano Padulosi asks the tough questions.
- Açaí: could the wonder fruit also be wonderful for forests? CIFOR asks the tough questions.
- And more: You mean you can eat that?
- Horticulture has rock stars? My turn to ask the tough questions.
- Ok, so what US county is “…a hotbed of diversified, small-scale organic, natural processed food production”? Maybe not so tough.
- Will there be a follow-up to Lancet’s 2008 series on malnutrition? That’s an easy one.
- Luigi’s mother-in-law asks: Where can I get my hands on that drought-resistant tea?
- Got any other questions? World Wide Views on Biodiversity wants to hear from you, this Saturday. (Answers too, I suppose.)