CIMMYT’s genebank has a fancy new profile pic on Facebook. Not sure if they’ll make it more generally available, so here it is for those of our readers who are not into social media. Click on it if you want to read the captions.
All roads lead to Rome
The Plant Treaty is having its sixth Governing Body meeting next week in Rome. Perhaps the main thing on the agenda is discussion of the recommendations of the Ad-hoc Open-ended Working Group to Enhance the Functioning of the Multilateral System. The full draft resolution is online. But here’s the money quote:
I’ll be there and will try to post on the deliberations as they happen. If I can’t do that, I’ll let you know what happened after the event. There’s also a full complement of side events. Our friend Colin Khoury will be presenting his research on “Where our Food Crops Come from: A new estimation of countries’ interdependence in plant genetic resources.” You can find out more from CIAT. Whose comms machine has also come up with a cool poster.
Cary Fowler on Oz TV
A global crops-go-round
A bunch of the usual suspects have just come up with an updating of an oldish study of global interdependence for crop diversity. I could describe the details here, but, frankly, Neil Palmer does it better than I ever could over at CIAT’s blog. And under a much better title than I can come up with. But to whet your appetite, here’s the money infographic, showing where different crop originated, and where they are now grown and consumed.
It’s all for the meeting of the Governing Body of the Plant Treaty, which is on next week.
LATER: Compare and contrast.
Pocket pigs are back, and this time they’re for real
It’s one way to fund cutting-edge research: BGI, the Chinese genomics institute, is offering its micro-pigs for sale as pets.
[T]he institute quoted a price tag of 10,000 yuan (US$1,600) for the micropigs, but that was just to “help us better evaluate the market”, says Yong Li, technical director of BGI’s animal-science platform. In future, customers will be offered pigs with different coat colours and patterns, which BGI says it can also set through gene editing.
This website is known for its devotion to pocket pigs, but please, if you want one, don’t call us. Call Nature, which has all the details.
You’ll need pockets both large and deep:
The animals weigh about 15 kilograms when mature, or about the same as a medium-sized dog.