Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

May 25, 2007

Another silver bullet?

The discovery of an enzyme which sits at a crucial step on the metabolic journey from glucose to that important anti-oxidant, vitamin C, opens the way for the kind of silver bullet thinkingÂ we have previously been somewhat critical of on this blog. Or it may not. We’ll see.

One of the researchers says:

We now have two strategies to provide enhanced protection against oxidative damage: Stimulate the endogenous activity of the identified enzyme or engineer transgenic plants which overexpress the gene that encodes the enzyme.

But I wonder whether this discovery will also allow the rapid evaluation of cultivars for vitamin C content?

May 25, 2007May 25, 2007

Forestry project launched

After Victor Mulinge’s valuable comment on planting mango trees, news of a project designed to help poor people to develop small and medium forest enterprises. It has only just begun, so don’t expect much yet in the way of results. But there is some interesting information and contacts at the project announcement page.

May 23, 2007

Sweetleaf hits India

I’m always somewhat ambivalent about the kind of story I saw today on Kangla Online about how some farmers in Senaputi district in north-eastern India are taking up the cultivation of Stevia. This is a South American herb in the Asteraceae which is widely cultivated around the world as the source of an alternative to artificial sweeteners.

On the one hand, it is always good to see farmers diversifying and experimenting, including with exotic crops. On the other, you wonder whether there isn’t a local – and locally used – species that might have been promoted and commercialized in this way. And will the money farmers raise from Stevia be sufficient to buy them and their families the nutritious food they will no longer be growing on their land?

May 23, 2007September 24, 2007

From the horse’s mouth

The recent paper showing that climate change threatens the wild relatives of crops received quite a bit of attention yesterday, being as how it was The International Day for Biodiversity. But even though the champagne has all gone and cake crumbs are all we have left, we decided to prolong the festivities just a little. So we called Andy Jarvis, lead author on the study and asked him to share a few thoughts. You can listen here.

You can also hear co-author Annie Lane over at Bioversity International’s news pages.

P.S. This may be the first in an occasional series of podcasts. Have you got something to say? Or would you like to hear someone or something particular? Let us know.

May 22, 2007May 25, 2007

People power

Here’s another potpourri, this one centred on local people’s perceptions of agricultural biodiversity. From the journal Livestock Science comes a paper looking at how traditional livestock keepers in Uganda select breeding bulls and cows among Ankole longhorn cattle. Another paper, this one from Crop Protection, discusses how Ethiopian farmers rank sorghum varieties with regard to their resistance to storage pests, and indeed what they do about such pests. And finally, from The Hindu newspaper, news of an initiative, to be launched on the International Day for Biological Diversity by the Kerala State Biodiversity Board, for a “people’s movement” to “prepare a database of all living organisms and traditional knowledge systems” in Kerala. The initiative is part of the state’s draft biodiversity strategy and action plan, which apparently includes consideration of agricultural biodiversity.