I’ve been reading Mathilda37’s interesting blog about human evolution for a while now. What makes her particularly worth following from our eeyrie here at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog is that she frequently writes about domesticates too. Case in point: she’s just done a very useful roundup of DNA studies of cattle. Roundup. Cattle. Geddit?
European Commission directive on landraces
And here’s the text of the Directive announced in an earlier post. As it starts being interpreted and implemented (or not) in different ways in different member countries, it will be interesting to monitor what actually happens to genetic diversity. I hope someone’s gathering the baseline data for this natural experiment, or “randomized evaluation” as I believe economists call them. The floor is open for discussion!
LATER: Perhaps the Farm Seed Opportunities project will set that baseline?
Sound news
CBC — the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — has a new series on air called Diet for a Hungry Planet: How our World Eats. I’m busy listening to the first programme right now, and while it is pretty corny, it is also very informative. Although the focus is on Canada (and why shouldn’t it be?) the ideas being discussed are applicable everywhere. If nothing else, they’ll provoke discussion, I’m sure. Be warned, though, that if you listen direct from the browser page (as opposed to downloading a podcast version and listening to that), if you navigate away from that page the show will stop and you’ll have to go back to the beginning.
Happy Birthday Ft Collins!
The National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation is 50 years old in August. Why aren’t people making more of this?
Weird fruit tales
Summer’s here and the time is right for talking about funny fruits. Yeah, I know it’s tacky, but I can never resist stories of seedlessness and humungous size.