Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

March 6, 2013

“Cromwo” unmasked as Ozoroa insignis

Does anyone know what the scientific name might be for the tree known as cromwo in Pokot #kenya @icraf @cifor_forets

— Luigi Guarino (@AgroBioDiverse) February 28, 2013

For the past week I’ve been in a bit of a tiz trying to identify a tree. Of course I searched for cromwo online, but all that turned up was an echo-chamber in which the “information” originally provided went round and round in a self-congratulatory cacophony. We did get some helpful hints of where to look, but they turned up empty too. “Forget it, Jeremy, it’s Chinatown,” someone said. Like Jake Gittes, I couldn’t do that.

And then it hit me. One of my longest-standing and, I like to think, deepest friendships is with a very famous writer and activist who, when we met, had just returned from an ethnobotanical study among … the Pokot! But that was then. Might she know?

I fired off an email. She fired back a reply designed to prepare me for the worst. And then, bingo!

This is your lucky day!

Kromwo is, according to the Kenyan Agriculture and Research Institute’s Agriculture Research Department’s report on the plants I collected (dated 10th april 1979), Ozoroa insignis Del. (Anacardiaceae)

Plural is Kram.

Certainly was! She’d also dutifully noted one of the uses for kromwo:

Burn and mix with milk for flavour.

I cannot describe how happy this made me, because with a formal scientific name, the “correct” transliteration being not much help, it is possible to go looking for additional information. You can find photographs, scientific investigations of the plant’s biochemical properties, misleading English names, and loads of other stuff.

Scientific names really do matter.

March 5, 2013March 5, 2013

New HQ for CGIAR

Ground broken yesterday in Montpellier. Very impressive. But am I the only one sees a striking visual metaphor or two in this architectural vision?

March 4, 2013March 4, 2013

Cheap at half the price

…a cost benefit comparison based on the results of this study confirms that the benefits of the GGB, even with the conservative estimation adopted within the current framework, significantly exceeds the costs of its operation. Thus in terms of insurance values generated by the GGB, the flow of annual equivalent values were estimated to represent a minimum of 2.95 million euros whereas operating costs of the GGB currently correspond to less than 3 per cent of this amount on an annual basis. Hence the present study suggests that maintaining and further developing the GGB is an economically justified strategy.

The final report on the “Valuation of the Greek Genebank” (that would be the GBB) project is out. Actually, it may have been out for a while, but I’ve only just now found it. We have blogged about it before. We’ll blog about it again, no doubt, when we’ve digested the results, of which the above quote is the parting shot.

March 4, 2013November 29, 2017

Brainfood: Diverse grasslands, More diverse grasslands, Latitudinal meta-gradients, Acacia barcoding, Cryoconserving recalcitrant seeds, Tree tomato, Modeling parasites, Landscape complexity & services, Genomics & breeding

~~Transgressive overyielding of soil microbial biomass in a grassland plant diversity gradient~~. Dead link. More microbial biomass in mixtures of plants than in each of the monocultures. Which I guess is a good thing?
Ecosystem function enhanced by combining four functional types of plant species in intensively managed grassland mixtures: a 3-year continental-scale field experiment. That transgression goes for the yield of the plants too. The mixtures were also more resistant to weed invasion.
Latitudinal gradients as natural laboratories to infer species’ responses to temperature. Meta-analysis shows that many life history traits vary with latitude, but not necessarily with temperature.
DNA barcoding for conservation, seed banking and ecological restoration of Acacia in the Midwest of Western Australia. Not quite there yet, is it?
Preservation of Recalcitrant Seeds. We have the technology. Recalcitrance is not an excuse. And may not be as common as advertised anyway.
Genetic diversity and relationships in accessions from different cultivar groups and origins in the tree tomato (Solanum betaceum Cav.). It is variable. It originated in Ecuador. Even the press release struggles to say much more than that. They should have asked the mother-in-law.
Metabolic approaches to understanding climate change impacts on seasonal host-macroparasite dynamics. Fortunately, and yet suspiciously, it is easy to estimate the model parameters even when you don’t have much data.
Flow and stability of natural pest control services depend on complexity and crop rotation at the landscape scale. You need complexity in both space and time to get the most out of your landscapes.
Improving fruit and wine: what does genomics have to offer? A lot. But you have to be ready for it.

March 2, 2013March 1, 2013

Cassava accessories in Oxford

The latest In Our Time sent me scurrying to the online database of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum. Gotta love a museum whose collection you can search using the keyword “cassava accessory.” I also liked the historic photographs of the Luo, several of which include agricultural biodiversity.