- Lamb ham: an easter tradition we can all get behind.
- Indian researchers market a new earthworm. Not to bring you down or anything.
- PPP are the new black. It says here.
- Cassava gets Big Data treatment. That’s kinda biotechnology too. But then you have to commercialize the stuff, right?
- “Food price shocks are both a determinant and effect of conflict.”
- Recognizing the “rubber soldiers”.
- Chinese experts tell Mongolians how to be more resilient to climate change. I hope it works out for them.
- New potato and sweet potato varieties for the Pacific come to CePaCT.
- Any of those potato varieties benefit from wild relatives?
- New plantain variety for Uganda.
- Galician genebank gets old brassicas. National genebank unavailable for comment. Actually, national genebank unavailable.
- “We can see the blinkered promotion and systematic ‘bigging-up’ of individual agricultural technologies, and their real or imagined impacts, as a direct result of the uncritical acceptance of the language of ‘impact at scale’.”
- Biotechnologist says we need biotechnology to feed world. QED.
Seeds of Time comes to Bonn!
Complementary potato conservation in the Parque de la Papa
I was in South America for the past couple of weeks, which is why blogging has been, well, slow. One of the places I visited was the Parque de la Papa, or Potato Park, near Cusco in Peru, thus fulfilling a long-standing ambition. The Parque brings together six local communities around the imperative to conserve local potato diversity, both wild and cultivated, and use it sustainably. They raise money through ecotourism, including a restaurant serving local delicacies, but also through action research projects. One of the more important things that’s been happening is the “repatriation” of virus-free landraces from the genebank of the International Potato Centre (CIP), including with support from the International Treaty.
CIP staff have also been training local people in the production of botanical seed, as part of a project implemented by the Asociación ANDES with support from the Global Crop Diversity Trust. The seed is being stored in a community genebank, but will be safety duplicated at CIP, and hopefully also eventually in Svalbard. The photo shows Pedro doing a demonstration of how seeds are extracted from fruits for storage. The guy on the right is Alejandro Argumedo of ANDES. Really good to see ex situ and on farm conservation working together and complementing each other, as they should.
Forum for the Future of Agriculture debates the future of agriculture
The Forum for the Future of Agriculture has a programme of activity focused on the food and environmental security agenda, across Europe and the world. The main platform is the annual conference in Brussels. This is established as the premier meeting place for those who have a stake in the future of agriculture and has been addressed by European Commissioners, MEPs, National Government Ministers, Industry Leaders, Farming Entrepreneurs, NGOs, International Economic Leaders, International Organisations and Academics.
And that annual conference is on right now. You can follow the webcast, or on Twitter.
Hope speakers at #FFA2015 highlighting vital importance of securing crop diversity in #genebanks 4 crop improvement, resilience @CropTrust
— AgroBioDiverse (@AgroBioDiverse) March 31, 2015
More millets than you can shake a stick at
Rather good advocacy video from the Deccan Development society.
Of course, you might get the impression from the film that nobody else has given millets a thought, but hey, that’s advocacy for you.