Tangled Bank 94 is up at Life before Death, full of biological diversity and goodness. Best part about it? The host is a bee-keeper! (I think I may have apiarist-envy.) She hasn’t actually posted on bees since 28 September, but it is winter so there can’t be all that much to write. I would love to have an expert’s view on the latest news on Colony Collapse Disorder in the US, which is that it is not the result of bees imported from Australia carrying a virus imported from Israel.
Moringa update
A comment on an ancient post about Moringa prompted two reactions. First, happiness that our page must be turning up in someone’s searches, tinged with sorrow that I don’t know of any financial partners to help protect the Congo basin with Moringa. Secondly, to ask what’s new with Moringa.
Not a lot at the site itself, but that’s probably because they’ve all been working to spread the word. And that word is that Moringa Leaf Powder is likely to be certified by the Food and Drug Board of Ghana, if they receive the necessary data. I hope that happens soon because it will offer an outlet and an income opportunity to all the people who have worked so hard to bring Moringa products to market.
But I confess I’m not all that happy myself with the designation of Moringa as “The Miracle Tree”. Sure it’s a good tree, and as Luigi said back then “really the adjective ‘multi-purpose’ could have been invented for this plant”. There’s all too much miracle silver-bullet style thinking around, and I would have hoped that, knowing the value of diversity better than anyone, the folks associated with Moringa would be less inclined to put all their eggs in one basket and all their faith in one tree.
Still, that’s quibbling. Snooping around on some other photos, I noticed the URL for the Environmental Development Youth Movement, which seems to be a key promoter of Moringa in Ghana. Fascinating site (especially if you like photographs of lots of packages) which has its own village and which seems to be doing good work. They’re looking for volunteers too. Say we sent you.
Photo by Armelle de Saint Sauveur
Practical policy research opportunity
Good news, everyone. There’s money available from a programme called BiodivERsA ((No comments, please, on the beauty, or otherwise, of that particular name.)) You have to come up with a proposal for an international research project to:
- link scientific advancement to challenges in biodiversity policy and conservation management;
- generate new knowledge and insights with the eventual goal of use in policy and management;
- generate added value to national research projects across Europe by linking expertise and efforts across national teams.
Furthermore, it should have to do with biodiversity, and should link scientific advance to policy and practice. And it should include partners from other ERA-net countries. The online pre-proposal form will be available from next Monday, 10 December.
So you could, for example, decide to study the impact of european legislation on levels of agricultural biodiversity and then propose policy solutions that would increase the diversity farmers and others can easily make use of. But they’ll never fund you.
I wonder what they will fund.
Hat tip: Ecology and Policy.
Tasty rice
I’m at IRRI in the Philippines the whole week (and the next, actually, but that’s another story) for a workshop to develop a global ex situ conservation strategy for rice genetic resources. More on that later. Right now, I just wanted to show you a photo I took today during a rice variety tasting the T.T. Chang Genetic Resources Centre laid on. There were about 20 different genotypes from around the world: normal and fragrant, white and black, loose and very sticky. They included Carolina Gold, which I blogged about a few days ago. It’s amazing how different rice varieties can taste.
Floral glory
A fascinating post over at Human Flower Project takes as its starting point the different cultural aesthetics associated with different styles of flower-arranging, from the all-encompassing European “one of everything” to the zen simplicity of Japanese ikebana. But that’s really all just throat-clearing prior to Julie’s rhapsodizing on flower bouquets in Afghanistan. She wonders what inspired the Afghan style, and whether it has survived. “[W]ith all that’s happened in the past three decades, do flowers in Afghanistan today look anything like Ard’s picture from the early 1970s? Can an aesthetic this original and strong survive thirty years of war?” good question. I have no idea.
Flickr photo by Ard Hesselink, used under a Creative Commons Licence.