Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

October 14, 2012October 14, 2012

Botanical lab wins big prize

Sainsbury laboratory Camb 008

In a surprise decision the 2012 Stirling prize went to neither of the critics’ favourite buildings, nor to the Olympic Stadium. The winner is a relatively modest laboratory in Cambridge, designed by Stanton Williams, set in the university’s Botanic Gardens.

How wonderful that a laboratory in a botanic gardens should have won the 2012 Stirling Prize, awarded to the building that has “made the greatest contribution to British architecture”. Apparently the scientists who work there love it too. Any of you working on crops or wild relatives? And that reminds me, I wonder whether they’ve appointed a new Director yet. We’re both available …

October 13, 2012October 12, 2012

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near

There’s quite a lot of metaphor coming out of ICRISAT lately, for some reason. First we had Genes of Gold, referring to the use that the centre has made of the biodiversity within its crops in developing new, improved varieties. Then today we have a video on the Jewels of ICRISAT, which includes a couple of the aforementioned new varieties, plus the genebank itself.

The genebanks of the CGIAR, of which ICRISAT is one, have of course on occasion been described as the crown jewels of the system. They cost $21 million a year or thereabouts. Which seems cheap for crown jewels. Especially compared to the sort of price tag people are putting on saving the whole of biodiversity, rather than just that part of it which feeds us all.

October 12, 2012October 12, 2012

Featured: EU regulations

Richard Hardwick points us to the full text (PDF, 23 pages) of that “[w]eird statement on genetic resources from EU Commission” we mentioned in a recent Nibble.

I think its from the people who promised “to explore the scope for developing a strategy for the conservation of genetic diversity.”

Right. So who’s going to read it for us?

October 12, 2012

Bean books bounty

Nice coincidence to get notice of two separate books on beans on the same day. The Fundación Herdez A.C. has El Frijol available for download from its website. Looks very thorough; and free. But in Spanish. Probably on the more popular side, you can also buy Ken Albala’s Beans: A History. Though I’ve just noticed this was actually published a few years ago. Nevermind.

October 10, 2012

Getting to grips with the botanical literature

Mark Nesbitt of Kew manages a very useful resource on how to access botanical and ethnobotanical literature on the web. Compare and contrast with a recent similar effort aimed at the prospective germplasm collector. If you want a laugh, check out how we used to do things back before online was even a word. And if you want to look into the future, Roderic Page is a useful guide.