Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
China has lost 90% of the wheat varieties it had 60 years ago. The US has lost over 90% of the fruit tree and vegetable varieties it had at the start of the 20th century. Mexico has lost 80% of its corn varieties, India 90% of its rice varieties. In Spain, the number of melon …
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that one crop variety does disappear every single day. The question still remains: does it matter? After all, the variety that was just lost yesterday might be very similar to one that’s still out there today. That’s part of the reason why a group of French researchers …
Continue reading “The how and why of indicators of agricultural biodiversity”
Regarding in situ and on-farm conservation, the EU requested the identification of indicators of diversity to establish and monitor changes in diversity at a national, regional and global level. That’s from IISD’s report on day 2 of CGRFA 13. ((Do pay attention: that’s the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.)) I like …
In view of the failure of all ex situ rice seed banks to protect the erosion of rice genetic diversity, CIS [Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies] established Vrihi (Sanskrit name of “rice”), the first non-governmental rice seed bank for farmers, in 1997. Coordinated by its founder Debal Deb, Vrihi Beej Binimoy Kendra is the largest non-governmental …
Why are there no perennial grain crops? That’s the provocative question posed by a recent paper in Evolutionary Applications written by three scientists working at The Land Institute. ((Van Tassel, D., DeHaan, L., & Cox, T. (2010). Missing domesticated plant forms: can artificial selection fill the gap? Evolutionary Applications DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-4571.2010.00132.x)) Whose institutional mission, of …