Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

January 16, 2008June 22, 2015

PGR Newsletter published

The latest issue of PGR Newsletter, published by Bioversity International and FAO, is available online. It includes a tribute to Professor Jack Hawkes, a towering figure in the history of agricultural biodiversity, and much else of potential interest.

NOTE: The links on this post were updated on 23 June 2015 to reflect a new arrangement for the hosting of the PGR Newsletter.

January 16, 2008October 10, 2017

Indian biodiversity information

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)…

January 16, 2008November 28, 2017

FAO developing forestry strategy

…and you can download the discussion document and comment on it here. Via ~~Non-Wood Forest Products Newsletter~~¹.

January 16, 2008

Archaeo-agrobiodiversity discoveries highlighted

Squash seeds and chickens feature among theÂ 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.

January 16, 2008

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,Â links between food and culture. Oh, and us.

Fresh Nibbles

China is building its germplasm collection at the National Frigid Zone Crop and Soybean Germplasm Resources Mid-term Bank in Harbin. Cool.
Driscoll’s helped build China’s blueberry industry, then discovered that knowledge, infrastructure and genetics have a habit of escaping. Not so cool.
Meanwhile, the Philippines wants its rice collection to hit 21,000 varieties by the end of the year. IRRI unavailable for comment.
Italy is establishing a major global olive genebank. Unclear where it fits in with other major global olive genebanks, but some redundancy is good.
FAO showcases Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, where crops, landscapes and traditional knowledge have survived together. Like olives in Italy, I guess.
The mangelwurzel is making a comeback, because apparently forgotten root vegetables just need better publicity, and not a fancy GIAHS.
Ohio growers are trying to save the pawpaw just as Americans are discovering it, partly because of better publicity.
BeanGPT is bringing AI to breeding and farming beans. Maybe it can help the mangelwurzel and pawpaw too?

Published on September 23, 2026