Conservation Letters has a paper which estimates how much conservation NGOs have spent in Sub-Saharan Africa. The short answer is about US$160 million a year in 2004-6, but there’s plenty of dissecting of the headline numbers in the paper. What I want to know is: how much of that went on agrobiodiversity. Or maybe just the wild relatives of crops and livestock?
Nibbles: Globalizing locavorism, Pollinator relations, Fisheries, Pea wild relative, Haitian coffee, Niche modeling, Slow Food, Chayote, Grass vs corn, Shade chocolate, American organic
- “…eleven models of regional food aggregation and distribution that are successful in linking local farmers with regional food chains.” Via.
- Hell hath no fury like a fig tree scorned.
- Tracking monkfish, saving monkfish.
- The history of the wild relative of the pea.
- Can coffee help rebuild Haiti?
- “Integrating bioclimate with population models to improve forecasts of species extinctions under climate change.”
- “The commoditization of products and taste: Slow Food and the conservation of agrobiodiversity.”
- CIAT promotes chayote in Vietnam. Why? Well, it’s not about the crop or the country. I suppose it’s about farmers and markets. But is there a diversity angle?
- How old is feeding corn (maize) to cows? Older than some people think, apparently.
- Shade-grown cacao sows seeds of its own demise.
- Waiting for the results of the USDA organic survey…
IUCN on Flickr
IUCN has some nice new photos up at Flickr. I don’t really understand the eco-fashion ones, there are no crop wild relatives among the “Celebrating biodiversity” ones, 1 and, though there is a nod to agriculture in the set on adapting to climate change, the captions could be better. But that’s all just quibbling, and a bit of sour grapes, no doubt. I don’t see us in agricultural biodiversity doing any better.
Hold the phone! It’s a seriously endangered crop wild relative
It has happened, and January not even over yet. The IUCN’s Red List Species of the Day, which we are privileged to feature in a little widget over there on the right, has hit paydirt with a crop wild relative: Apium bermejoi, which Wikipedia says is “closely related to the wild form of celery”. What are the chances that it could confer resistance to some of the many pests and diseases that celery is martyr to? One expert told us: “my feeling is that it has not been used in celery breeding to any effect”. Anyone know differently?
A. bermejoi seeds are in storage, although in the wild there may be fewer than 100 individuals hanging in there on the island of Menorca.
Its habitat is often trampled by passing fishermen and hikers, or more seriously disrupted by off-road motorcyclists. In addition, Apium bermejoi must compete with a wide variety of other plant species for essential water and nutrients. Its present decline seems to be related to a series of drier summers, showing that this species is very sensitive to climate change.
That’s a lot to cope with.
Yasuní National Park disappoints lovers of crop wild relatives
The Yasuní National Park in Ecuador is apparently the mother of all biodiversity hotspots, “home to the most diverse array of plants and animals in South America and possibly the planet.” And not only that, it may actually continue to be so, unlike many other protected areas.
There are hints that the park could have extra conservation value in a warming world. Yadvinder Malhi, an ecologist at Oxford specializing in the Amazon, said that nearly all climate models simulating the impacts of global warming show the area staying wet even as other parts of the vast basin get drier.
Yeah, but has it got any crop wild relatives, I hear you ask. Well, I asked our friend Julian Ramirez at CIAT, who works with Andy Jarvis. Alas, only one species turns up in Yasuní from the genera of the main South America crops for which he has a decent number of geo-referenced observations (Arachis, Solanum, Phaseolus and Manihot): Manihot brachyloba. Andy, who did his PhD in Yasuní, says he also saw wild cacao and pineapples there. No doubt Julian is putting together the data for those genera as we speak.
Yasuní is of course in the Amazonian lowlands. Wild relatives of Phaseolus and Solanum are in other, nearby protected areas in the Ecuadorian Andes. But that’s another story. For this one: thanks, Julian.