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Cary Fowler receives William L. Brown Award

Congratulations to Cary Fowler for receiving the 7th William L. Brown Award for Excellence in Genetic Resource Conservation.

The William L. Brown Award recognizes the outstanding contributions of an individual in the field of genetic resource conservation and use. It is administered by the William L. Brown Center (WLBC) at the Missouri Botanical Garden and is made possible through a generous endowment from the Sehgal Family Foundation, in cooperation with the family of Dr. Brown.

Dr. Brown was a distinguished, internationally-recognized scientist, businessman, and humanitarian. Over the course of five decades, he devoted himself to the collection, preservation, understanding, and sharing of plant genetic resources in order to help meet the global demand for food. The William L. Brown Award recognizes an individual whose efforts and achievements reflect a concern for those issues that were so important to Dr. Brown.

Cary was presented with the award yesterday during his keynote lecture at the 9th BGCI International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens, hosted by the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Richly deserved.

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Promoting the sweet potato in Africa

Good to see the March edition of Hortinews magazine focusing on the sweetpotato in Africa. 1 I found it a little difficult to navigate the feature online, although you can also just download the whole issue as a pdf, so let me link directly to two stories on orange-fleshed sweetpotatoes (OFSP):

Now, a lot of effort has gone into developing and disseminating OFSP in parts of Africa, and their potential importance in addressing vitamin A deficiency is not disputed. However, not everything has gone totally smoothly. As an IDS report, coincidentally also just out, points out:

Donor-funded initiatives have played a central role in developing all stages of the OFSP value chain, with a particular focus on breeding new varieties that appeal to the preferences of both producers and consumers. Development projects have also supported the dissemination of planting materials and funded public awareness campaigns. However, information collected for this case study suggests that, so far, interventions have not achieved widespread uptake of OFSP. Only a small minority of farming households in intervention districts grow OFSP. 2 Commercial farmers who supplied OFSP planting materials to project distribution systems have found that, after project funding ended, the local market was not viable, and have ceased production. Meanwhile, awareness of and demand for the crop among consumers have been very limited; one survey conducted in an intervention district found that only 2 per cent of households consumed OFSP. Traders and food processors report that there is little demand, and dealing with the crop is not profitable. This state is perhaps unsurprising given that the introduction of OFSP is still relatively recent, that project efforts have been relatively scattered and uncoordinated, and that there has been little focus on commercially viable value chains. Yet the challenges encountered in Tanzania provide important lessons for other agriculture-nutrition initiatives.

But no need to panic, all is not lost. It’s still relatively early days yet, and the report also makes some sensible recommendations to turbo-charge adoption:

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I think it would have been useful, as well as fair, for Hortinews to point out what still needs to be done, as well as what has been achieved. But maybe that doesn’t sell glossy magazines.

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Setting genebank data free

There’s a strange little article on SciDevNet about the petition lodged with the UN by Norman Warthmann, of the Australian National University, and Claudio Chiarolla, of the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations in France, “to create a legal framework requiring governments to make data from the genetic sequencing of plants freely available.”

Strange for three reasons. One, why not make more of an explicit connection with DivSeek, which is trying to work through exactly these issues and was the subject of another article on the same website a few months ago?

Two, why link to a pdf of the text of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, when said instrument has a perfectly nice website?

And three, somebody should really have checked this chart of germplasm transfers under the International Treaty, because most of the “countries” listed are not countries at all, but in fact the international centres housed by Mexico (CIMMYT), the Philippines (IRRI) etc.

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The international genebanks managed by the CGIAR Centres are by far the largest contributors to germplasm flows under the International Treaty, which is not something you’d be able to gather from this without a lot more background and context.

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Asian PGR networks redux?

FAO says that “[r]epresentatives and scientists from 15 countries in Asia have agreed the establishment of a regional network to exchange information on conservation, preservation and utilization” of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. Now, I like regional PGR networks, I really do. I even helped coordinate one for a few years. But this has been tried before in Asia. What will be different this time? Hard to say from the press release, but there’s a full report on the way, and we’ll blog about it when it’s out.