A blog post from Kew alerts us to the fact that the collecting notebooks and photographs of Prof. Jack Hawkes, recently deceased pioneer of the plant genetic resources conservation movement, were accessioned into its Archive last year. They must make for fascinating reading. I hope they will be scanned and put online in due course. One does wonder, though, why these precious papers did not find a home at the University of Birmingham, where Prof. Hawkes taught for so many years, and indeed established a seminal MSc course. Anyway, the important thing is that they will be properly taken care of and made available to researchers. Like all the wild potato herbarium specimens and germplasm Prof. Hawkes collected over a long and illustrious career.
Agrobioblitz next?
The British public are being called on to help document their fauna and flora. Nice, and there should be some interesting data on crop wild relatives in there. But I hope this is followed up with a similar blitz on heirloom crop varieties.
Paper on climate change and species distributions attains classic status
Conservation.Bytes features a landmark 2004 paper on the projected effect of climate change on species distributions as its latest Conservation Classic. It also points to a 2008 summary of such studies over at BraveNewClimate. Regular readers will know that there have been studies which have focused specifically on the wild genepools of different crops.
Nibbles: Boswellia, Nepali rice, Andes, Pacific nutrition, Wild rice, Coffea, Kashmir, Fibres, Fermentation
- Saving Dhofar’s frankincense tree. Evocative things they are too.
- The rich may have trouble getting into heaven, but they manage more agrobiodiversity. At least of rice. At least in Nepal.
- Gotta be careful with niche modeling in mountain areas. Well, duh.
- New Pacific food leaflets from SPC.
- Ok, how weird is it that I have a personal connection of sorts to all of the above? Probably not much.
- Ex situ not enough for wild rice. Say it ain’t so!
- The evolution of coffee.
- “If the rains do not fall we may face problems with certain crops.” Right.
- Network on natural fibres proposed by Industree Craft Foundation and the Commonwealth Secretariat. Sounds like fun.
- Screening lactic acid strains for sorghum beer making. Well, kinda. Somebody please fund this vital research!
Nibbles: Fungi, Dogs, Protected areas, Banana, Ethiopia, Haiti
- Chromosomes can hop from one pathogenic fungus to another. Probably not a good thing.
- Dogs originated in the Middle East after all. Decide, already, will ya?
- IUCN also has a Protected Area of the Day. Genebank of the day, anyone?
- Problems with bananas in Uganda surprisingly mainly abiotic. Live and learn.
- Vaviblog celebrates Gary Nabhan’s birthday. Kinda. Which is also St Patrick’s Day? How cool is that?
- Report on Haiti’s seed security. Needs digesting.