Nibbles: Date palm sex, Heirlooms congress, World Camel Day, Latino livestock, Coconut craft, Hybridizing Alocasia, Sami reindeer, Serbian agri-environments, Honey, Feidherbia

Brainfood: Cabbages, Crops in Darfur, Sowing dates, People and biodiversity, Honeybees, Rhizobium, Figs, Urban ag, Wild olives, Ancient textiles, Ducks, Wheat introgression, Food citizenship, Crop models, Trifolium, Variety choice

Protecting Chinese agricultural biodiversity products

So, in retaliation for Europe protecting Roquefort, Stilton cheese and Scottish farmed salmon (sic.), among other agrobiodiversity products, the Chinese have slapped Protected Denominations of Origin (PDO) on Guanxi honey pomelos, Shaanxi apples and Longjing tea and a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) on Liaxian Mashan yams. ((Sorry, Google doesn’t know anything about these delectable-sounding yams. Which I am willing to bet are sweet potatoes.)) Well, no, not really, it was all much more amicable than that. And Dongshan asparagus, Jinxiang garlic, Pinggu peach, Yancheng crayfish and Zhenjiang vinegar are waiting in the wings…

Nibbles: Genebank, Sweet wheat, Participatory Research, Land “grab”, Yampah, Vegetables, Tea, Chilling, Rainforest products, Asses, Climate proofing, Natural products

Veggie genebank gets its seeds out

The University of California Davis (UC Davis) leads an international effort to help developing countries through improved marketing and production of high-value horticultural crops. Established by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Horticulture Collaborative Research Support Program (HortCRSP) supports projects to improve the livelihoods of the world’s poor and builds on their needs highlighted in the Global Horticulture Assessment.

Oh hum, right? Not so fast. One of the projects being supported is this:

Dr. Ricky Bates, Horticulture Department of Penn State University has received a one-year exploratory grant from HortCRSP to look at methodologies for strengthening informal indigenous seed systems in Northern Thailand and Cambodia.

And it gets better. A genebank is involved. My cup runneth over.

The ECHO seed bank partnership is a very important integral part of this project. Dr. Bates states that, “ECHO has been around for awhile. ECHO is located in Ft. Myers Florida and has been around for at least 20 years. They see themselves more or less as an extension service where they are there to resource and support NGOs and people working all around the world with poor farmers. It is a little like an extension system where they provide information and printed material via online or telephone calls to people who may find themselves perhaps in India with World Vision. ECHO is there as a resource for NGOs that do not have an agricultural background. What grew up with the development of ECHO has been the development of a vey innovative seed bank in Ft. Myers Florida where they sort of specialize in tropical fruits and vegetables. They make these seeds available at low cost or no cost to individuals and NGOs working around the globe in development.