Plant Genetic Resources: Our challenges, our food, our future

As predicted a few days ago, here’s Dr Mike Jackson’s report on that 2 June meeting on plant genetic resources organized by doctoral students at the School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham.

When I was asked to contribute a paper I had to think hard and long about a suitable topic. I’ve always been passionate about the use of plant genetic diversity to increase food security. I decided therefore to talk about the value of genebank collections, how that value might be measured, and I provided examples of how germplasm had been used to increase the productivity of both potatoes and rice.

If you have your own examples, leave a comment on Mike’s blog.

Pomegranate symbolism through the ages

Those of you that remember us agonizing about the minutae of agrobiodiversity iconography, to the extent of wondering if this

pomegranate.JPG

was indeed what it seemed to be, will rejoice with us that, with regards to pomegranates at least, we seem to have found the motherlode.

Pomegranates in Granada: Left by Rob via Flickr (Creative Commons); right by Jebulon via Wikimedia Commons (Creative Commons)
Pomegranates in Granada: Left by Rob via Flickr (Creative Commons); right by Jebulon via Wikimedia Commons (Creative Commons)

LATER: And then some.

LATER STILL: And then some more.

Talking PGR at Brum

The plant genetic resources conference at the University of Birmingham is now over, and the presentations are online, including from Mike Jackson, who I feel sure will say something about it all on his blog soon. And it looks like Svalbard may be in for some British deposits…

Hawaiian crop diversity festival

The Indigenous Crop Biodiversity Festival, in Maui, Hawaii, August 24-30, 2016 is a recognized parallel event to the IUCN World Conservation Congress. It offers an opportunity to explore the role of indigenous crop biodiversity conservation in food security and in reducing agricultural impacts to natural ecosystems from practitioners perspectives, as well as a look into island biodiversity conservation, in advance of the Congress. To find out more and to register for any of the many events and site visits of the week, some of which are rarely open to the public, please visit.

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