India is to build a national biodiversity information system. Will it include agricultural biodiversity? Not clear from the short article in The Hindu, but I hope to be surprised. The National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources does have relevant databases (though not all online yet)…
FAO developing forestry strategy
…and you can download the discussion document and comment on it here. Via Non-Wood Forest Products Newsletter((FAO’s link is broken.)).
Archaeo-agrobiodiversity discoveries highlighted
Squash seeds and chickens feature among the Top Ten discoveries of 2007, according to Archaeology Magazine. I believe we linked to both of these stories when they first appeared. The article on Polynesian breakthroughs also mentions work on pigs that we blogged about.
Oekologie available
Happy Birthday Oekologie. The 13th edition of this monthly blog carnival is up and running, with lots of posts that should tickle the fancy of anyone interested in agriculture and our food supply: worm compost, overfishing, links between food and culture. Oh, and us.
Apples unmoved
One of the bits of news we missed while we were resting and relaxing as hard as we were: the UK’s collection of apples and other fruits is staying at Brogdale. This may strike you as no-news news. It isn’t.
Long-standing readers will remember that the UK government put management of the site out to tender, and that two of the proposals required moving the entire collection to a new site. This seemed like a slightly daft idea, at least from our perspective. So it is good to relate that the management contract was awarded to Reading University, who will be leaving the collection where it is.
The Visitor Centre and sales areas are being expanded, and it could be that the collection is now poised to play a more important role in spreading the good news about all those fruit varieties that aren’t available in little plastic bags in the supermarket.
It has been a long and complex struggle, and it is not clear what the future of the Brogdale Horticultural Trust. We’ll try and keep informed.