Grahame Jackson is a plant pathologist and root crops expert who’s been working in the South Pacific for I guess going on for 30 years now. ((Full disclosure: He’s also a good friend of mine.)) Yet he’s not afraid of admitting he can still learn something by doing intensive fieldwork, as you can read over at my old stamping ground, PGR News from the Pacific, now ably helmed by Tevita Kete:
Chinese torture water report
Green energy, blue impacts, a report from the International Water Management Institute yesterday, says that plans to rapidly increase biofuel production in China and India threaten their ability to meet future food and feed needs. China plans to increase biofuel production fourfold, to 9% of its projected demand for petrol, by 2020. India aims to double the requirement for ethanol in petrol to 10% in the next year. Mainstream press bulletins cover that side of the report. But Scidev.net reveals that Chinese officials have countered and say that the IWMI report’s concerns have already been met, for example by a directive in May 2007 that bans the use of corn and by a shift to non-staple crops.
Just one little thing. Would someone at SciDev.net (or elsewhere) explain exactly what they mean when they describe batata as “a type of sweet potato”. And maybe the same person (or someone else) can explain how shifting the burden to non-staple crops, which the Chinese say they are doing, eases food shortages. Those crops use less water than corn, it is true, but they are edible too. Doesn’t that make them more valuable as food and feed?
Novelty crops
The October issue of USDA’s Agricultural Research Magazine has a number of pieces on “novelty crops,” which just seems to mean non-staples, although some of them are what is often referred to as neglected or underused species. Among the articles there’s one on how the National Plant Germplasm System is conserving the genetic diversity of these species.
Farmer Field Schools
I think we may have blogged before about a series of educational videos on the management of the rice crop aimed at your actual rice farmer. But there’s no harm in mentioning them again, especially since it gives me the opportunity of linking to the very useful resource centre of the Global Farmer Field School Network, which brings them all together and packages them with additional information. The site is serchable, and a quick look revealed quite a few interesting things on agrobiodiversity. Again, thanks to the indefatigable Danny for the link.
Competition Entry
Robert Hijmans writes:
I would like to submit this video to the competition:
The video shows IR64, a widespread rice cultivar, and IR64-sub1 growing side by side on a field at IRRI that experiences a (simulated) flash flood. IR64 is badly affected, IR64-sub1 comes out much better.