A couple of very different stories about drought resistance in the media today. The first one describes – albeit very briefly – how Italian breeders have come up with a new tomato variety that needs about a quarter of the water of thirstier types. It’s not clear from the article, but I got the impression genetic modification was involved, which would be odd as some wild tomato species are found in deserts! So I did a bit of snooping on the website of ENEA, the institute where the research was done, and I found a press release from a few days back which suggests (in Italian) that perhaps it was not genetic transformation but rather functional genomics that was involved. The second piece tells us how a combination of experimental and observational work by Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute scientists in Panama is suggesting that even in the humid tropics it is drought which is limiting the distribution of many species. As climate change is expected to manifest itself primarily though shifts in rainfall patterns in the tropics, this means that dramatic changes are likely in the composition of plant communities in Central America.
Kids eat more if fruit and veg are home-grown
A survey in the US has discovered that children eat more fruit and vegetables, and have a more positive attitude to those foods, if they have been grown in a home garden. That’s great, for children at homes with gardens. For the rest, school gardens can help:
“Students at schools with gardens learn about math and science and they also eat more fruits and vegetables. Kids eat healthier and they know more about eating healthy. It’s a winning and low-cost strategy to improve the nutrition of our children at a time when the pediatric obesity is an epidemic problem.”
I happen to think a garden is one of the finest teaching aides ever, but then, I’m biased.
Online conference for you
Markus Schmidt has invited any readers of this blog to take part in an e-conference on neglected and underutilized species in Asia. The day job prevents me from taking part, but I’m sure it will be pretty interesting, and some colleagues may well be there. I hope we’ll be able to link to the outcomes. Here’s the message from Markus:
Until April 17 2007 the European research project “Agrofolio” hosts an e-conference on Neglected and Underutilized Species NUS in selected southeast Asian countries (Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam) and China. During the e-conference we will discuss our preliminary list of NUS in Asian countries and the role of developed countries ( e.g. Europe, North America, Japan) in their possible support or unintented hindering (e.g. trade barriers) for sustainable use of NUS in Asian countries.
You can participate by registering for free at www.agrofolio.eu/forum/, or send an email to e.conference@agrofolio.eu.
School project on peas
A brief post at Intercambioperu explains how schoolchildren at Corazon de Jesus have teamed up with Het Hof van Eden in the Netherlands to study the biodiversity of pea varieties. There’s not much more detail beyond that, but I’m hoping that they may share their progress and results. As we’ve noted before, school gardens offer a perfect environment to teach children about the importance of agricultural biodiversity and nutrition. I reckon there are also loads of opportunities to use diversity to teach all sorts of other subjects too, from human migrations to plate tectonics, to history to mathematics, and much more besides. Is anyone actually doing this though? And could we help in any way? Let us know.
I’d attempt to link the Peruvians to Bioversity International’s Cyber-Plant Conservation Project, but the server is down right now. When it is up I’ll try again.
School gardens
It seems pretty obvious that school food gardens should be quite useful teaching tools. Kids like nothing better than getting down and dirty. Well, anyway, now there’s proof. A paper in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, whose abstract you can read here, confirms “the efficacy of using garden-based nutrition education to increase adolescents’ consumption of fruits and vegetables.” What an opportunity for also teaching about agricultural biodiversity, highlighting its link to nutrition! Of course, in some parts of the world school gardens actually provide a significant proportion of the students’ diet…