- Opium gene decoded. Is that good?
- ILRI shares a bunch of presentations on value chains. Can’t be bad.
- Missouri Botanical Garden opens Center for Biodiversity Informatics. Will any good come of it?
- Agri scientists promote 2010 as biodiversity year. But that should have read Bioversity International. Bad.
- Wild edibles could hold key to protecting food supply? They mean wild relatives, of course. Very bad.
- More on our Twitter feed. You following us, right? Good!
- Beware the Ides of March! Laurel wreath bad for some.
Nibbles: Wild strawberries, Year of Biodiversity, Dog breeding, Vancouver’s Old Apple Tree
- NY Times does Svalbard.
- Gus Molina does agrobiodiversity.
- Dogs “continue to wither genetically.” Ouch.
- Rescuing an historical apple tree.
Another critically endangered crop wild relative
Like London busses in days of old, the IUCN’s endangered species doodad is featuring another crop wild relative just days after the previous one. This time it is Ramosmania rodriguesii, a somewhat distant relative of coffee, at one time reduced to a single tree on the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues.
RBG Kew has been propagating the plant, and has this to say about its uses:
Locals on Rodrigues believe that a tea made from the leaves of café marron is an invigorating drink that can treat venereal diseases and hangovers, although this has not been scientifically proven. An even more fanciful story is the ability of café marron to prevent children from having nightmares, but only if the child’s cuddly toy is thrown at the plant!
Café marron clearly hasn’t had much opportunity to contribute to coffee breeding programmes — it only set its first seed after being brought into captivity in 2003 — but you never know.
New Agriculturalist does (agro)biodiversity
The New Agriculturalist has a focus on biodiversity this month, including the agricultural kind. There’s a piece on the crop wild relatives distribution modeling work of our friend and occasional contributor Andy Jarvis. And a couple of things from my old stomping ground in the Pacific. All well worth a read.
The long wait is over
Rejoice. Today’s IUCN Species of the Day is a crop wild relative!