How to improve nutrition

Bob Ziegler, DG of IRRI, explains why the world needs biofortified staples:

Take the example of rice, the staple food for more than half of the world’s population – including more than half a billion of the world’s poorest in Asia. These people often eat rice and little else. While rice is an excellent food, it does not have all the vitamins and minerals a person needs – so many of these people don‘t get enough essential nutrients like iron, zinc, and vitamin A.

A diverse and nutritious diet is the best option, sadly however, this is often too expensive or simply unavailable.

Simple, eh?

Agricultural input requested for bioinformatics whitepaper

We’ve been asked to contribute an agricultural perspective to the Biodiversity Informatics Whitepaper, a document

…that is intended to inform funding organisations about the priorities as perceived by practitioners in the field.

You can find the document itself, and more background, here. Well worth a read, even if you decide not to comment.

Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference 2012…

…is off and running in Copenhagen

The Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC) will convene expertise in the fields of biodiversity informatics, genomics, earth observation, natural history collections, biodiversity research and policy needed to set such collaboration in motion.

Follow it on Twitter. See the presentations.

Report on it here, if you like.

LATER: Oh gosh, there’s also this today: 2nd LCIRAH Annual Workshop “The Role of Agricultural and Food Systems Research in Combating Chronic Disease for Development.” Here’s the hashtag.

Brainfood: Brassica breeding, NUS breeding, Soybean domestication, Bambara groundnut, Jatropha chain, Setaria drought tolerance