Little cemetery on the prairie

Also in The Economist, news that a little patch of prairie has turned up in the middle of urban St Louis, Missouri. It’s in a graveyard in the north of the city.


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There could be some crop wild relatives in this 25-acre remnant, I suppose: wild sunflowers, maybe? No word on whether there are any bison there, or whether they will be re-introduced as part of the management plan, which at the moment involves controlled burning and weeding.

Nibbles: Assisted migration, Livestock and ecosystems, Agrobiodiversity tourism, Earthworms, Fish, Cucurbits

GMO introgression risk mapped

Bioversity International’s Gene Flow Risk Assessment of Genetically Engineered Crops project, funded by GTZ and realized in collaboration with CIAT and Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia), has got (some of) its products out. The project focused on the “likelihood of gene flow and introgression to crop wild relatives (CWR) and other domesticated species.” A book is coming, but you can see the risk maps for a number of crops online now. And there’s also a bibliography.

LATER: Jeremy points out, correctly, that “see” in the last sentence above is a bit of an overstatement. You need to do a bit more work than is perhaps implied.