Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
I’ve often pontificated about Genebank Database Hell here, I’m sure to the annoyance of many readers. But we do have a chance to do something about at least one little corner of hell. If you want to do your bit, please take the Genesys user survey. Thanks!
Dirk has the answer to Pea Genebank Database Hell: A simple solution would be to agree on a set of prefixes that unequivocally identify each collection preserving those already widely accepted and then to clean up the passport data to link up potential duplicates. The 53674 Pisum accessions in Genesys could possibly be compacted to …
You may have noticed that a recent Crop Science paper by various ICRISAT staff, entitled “Mini Core Collection as a Resource to Identify New Sources of Variation” ((H.D. Upadhyaya et al. (2013). Mini Core Collection as a Resource to Identify New Sources of Variation Crop Science DOI: 10.2135/cropsci2013.04.0259)) and focusing on chickpea, has been attracting …
Continue reading “Infrequently asked questions on the chickpea mini core”
Yes, I’m fully aware that you’re fed up with examples of how complex and time-consuming plant breeding is, and how reliant it is on material in genebanks being available in perpetuity. I can hear you saying it from here: “We get it, already; move on.” But it’s my blog, not to mention my job, so …
Continue reading “Rice breeding: the history behind the hope behind the hype”
Emma Cooper blogs her ethnobotanical MSc dissertation on British homegardeners and their cool crops. If she’d done her work in Sweden, she’d have written about Ragnar Pettersson and his “treasure of Ardre.” The downside of backyard farming: homeless hens. International e-Conference on Germplasm Data Interoperability: Genebank Database Hell gets an e-conference. What could possibly go …