Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
What causes genetic erosion? People in our business are way too fond of making lists of all the things that can possibly lead to a farmer abandoning a variety. But sometimes it’s just down to an accident. Take my mother-in-law. Please. No, but seriously, this is an interesting example of the law of unintended consequences. …
Continue reading “A tale of genetic erosion narrowly averted”
Dave Wood has a question about genetic erosion in US apple varieties: How many did they have in 1492?
We get hours of amusement from poking holes in the many ways in which statements about the loss of 75% of agricultural biodiversity are likely to be less than accurate any way you slice them. But here’s an entirely new wrinkle. A friend recently wrote asking for some moral support for a grant proposal, which …
Probably way more than you want to know about food security in Yemen, but stunning nonetheless. NordGen tells us how to measure seed moisture content. In Russian. The Irish have benefited from at least one bank. Alas, that bank is Pavlovsk. Indian farmers turning their back on traditional crops because of climate change. Hope NBPGR …
Our innocuous post on genetic erosion in Georgia elicits consternation from Dirk at the lack of proper reference to previous work, support from Eliseu by analogy with a similar study in Portugal, and the usual diatribe from Luigi about the level of discourse on genetic erosion. But really, it was all about the threshing board.