Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
I really didn’t give the short piece on the conservation of cider apple varieties in England a second thought when it first came out on the BBC a few days ago. Hundreds of varieties of rare cider apples are being planted across England after being donated to the National Trust by a collector. … They …
After Pavlovsk and Brogdale, it is now the turn of a French fruit genebank to feel the heat. According to Declan Butler’s somewhat breathless piece in Nature: Uncertainty hangs over one of the world’s largest and most important grapevine collections. The Domaine de Vassal vineyard, on France’s Mediterranean coast, houses a vast sweep of grape …
Is there a Pavlovsk situation brewing in Lima? ((For new readers, The Pavlovsk Experiment Station, outside St Petersburg, was established by NI Vavilov to house parts of the massive collection of agricultural biodiversity his institute amassed. It has been under threat from developers and politicians for more than 3 years now, and it’s future is …
The latest issue of Plant Breeding Matters, the organ of the British Society of Plant Breeders, focuses on genebanks around the UK. In particular, the ones at the John Innes Centre and Kew, but the accompanying map hints at further treasures. We have mentioned a couple of these other genebanks before (Brogdale, Warwick), more often …
The famous British apple collection at Brogdale in Kent, which has been through some vicissitudes this past year, and could do with some good news, is being replanted, and the BBC has a video. Incidentally, I recently learned that the composer Gerald Finzi assembled a selection of heirloom varieties at his country house, Church Farm, …