Readers with a long(ish) memory may remember some uncertainty a couple of years back over the future of the UK’s national collections of vegetable diversity at Wellesbourne. I’m glad to say the genebank is flourishing as part of Warwick University, with funding from Defra. It even has a Twitter feed, over which there is currently in course an interesting discussion of Cornish cauliflowers.
The hanging yams of Ibadan
Dr Lopez Montes of @IITA, member of @CGIAR in Ibadan Nigeria showing fast breeding of water yams thru vine cutting pic.twitter.com/Op5W4k3a
— Frank Rijsberman (@FrankRijsberman) July 19, 2012
Intrigued? You can read more about these hanging bags, and how they fit into IITA’s yam development strategy in general, in a recent article in the centre’s very readable R4D Review. 1
Tenerife diversity illustrated
The Centro de Conservación de la Biodiversidad Agrícola de Tenerife (CCBAT) has a Facebook page on which they have just announced the release of an attractive new poster of bean diversity, reproduced here. There’s also one about potatoes. And a book summarizing traditional diversity in all the crops.
Bioversity ramps up its nutrition work
A couple of bits of related news from Bioversity. The book “Sustainable Diets and Biodiversity” is ready for downloading. And the first newsletter of the Biodiversity for Food and Nutrition Project is out. I suppose the project will feed into the new CGIAR Research Programme on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health. But it’s not clear to me what stage of development that has reached. The CGIAR Consortium website doesn’t really say.
LATER: Ok, I found it on CGIAR Fund website, and it does seem that the nutrition CRP has been approved.
The surprisingly peripatetic Bambara groundnut
Well, I finally made it back to the office after a couple of weeks on the road in Asia. Lots to talk about, of course, but it will have to wait for a while because I have too much catching up at work, and then I’ll be back home in Nairobi for the whole of August. But I can’t resist posting one little thing. What you see here is Bambara groundnut being sold in a street market in Bogor, Indonesia, where it is know as, wait for it, “kacang Bogor”, or Bogor peanut. This is the first time I’ve seen this crop outside Africa (inluding Madagascar). What prompted me to post about it is that I just saw an intriguing tweet about the crop from NRI:
Can #bambara nut be an ingredient for wonder food plumpynut? @NRInstitute & @McKnightFdn working in #Tanzania http://t.co/HXwLfqNf
— Ben Bennett (@Bennett123123) July 19, 2012
Wikipedia is clearly wrong about Bambara groundnut’s production areas. Though it does get the reference correct, it looks like it has reproduced the wrong map. But the correct one doesn’t seem to include Indonesia:
Mind you, it doesn’t include Madagascar either, where it is definitely an important crop, and from whence we even have germplasm, as Genesys reveals. I even collected it myself there, back in the day.
Oh, for decent crop distribution maps! Anyway, anyone have any other sightings of Vigna subterranean outside Africa/Madagascar?