Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

October 4, 2011October 6, 2011

Back in Baku

I’ve been travelling so I missed the announcement a couple of days ago on their blog that our friends at CCAFS ¹ have a new all-singing, all-dancing platform called the Adaptation and Mitigation Knowledge Network. ² Which is annoying because the issue of changes in the suitability of the climate for potato cultivation came up in the discussions at the meeting I’m attending here in Baku. And I would quite happily have stolen something else from CCAFS for my presentation. ³ The conference is called “Diversity, characterization and utilization of plant genetic resources for enhanced resilience to climate change” and it was hosted by the Azerbaijan Genetic Resources Institute with support from a number of CGIAR Centres active in the region and FAO, which provided funding for the project of which the meeting is one of the activities.

There were researchers from pretty much all of the countries of the Central Asia and Caucasus (CAC) region, plus Turkey, Iran, Ukraine and Russia to boot. Many of the presentations brought home to me — and not for the first time — what a tremendously rich part of the world this is for agricultural biodiversity: wild asparagus with stems five meters long; grape varieties sporting bunches almost as long as your arm; strange interspecific wheat hybrids with branched spikes; medicinal plants for every ailment you can think of; wheat landraces phenomenally high in zinc and iron. And that’s just the lunch. Fortunately, the place is also rich in talented researchers busy studying their agrobiodiversity, conserving it, and using it for health, nutrition and food security.

Sure, they have problems. Where do they not? But there seems to be a real commitment to getting the job done, enthusiasm even. I was particularly struck by the relatively close linkages between genebanks and breeding programmes in many of the CAC countries. That you certainly don’t see everywhere. I wonder if it’s a legacy of the VIR system. They could do with more collaboration, coordination and sharing of responsibilities at the regional level, not to mention better integration with the rest of the world. But maybe this meeting will help. Anyway, all the presentations, abstracts and final recommendations will be online soon. I’ll post something when they’re up and you can make up your own minds.

October 4, 2011

Catering for the Francophone agriculturist

Did you know that The New Agriculturist is available in French? Well, it is. It looks to me not just a straight translation of the English version, but also a slanting of the content towards a Francophone audience. There are separate RSS feeds for the two language versions. No word on whether Spanish is in the offing. Maybe someone from there will let us know…

October 4, 2011October 4, 2011

IRRI gets groovy

October 3, 2011October 1, 2011

More research on agriculture needed

Nature News reports on a meeting last week hosted by Jeff Sachs at Columbia University in New York. The idea was to create a global agriculture monitoring network, something he’s been promoting for a while, and all the big guns were there. ⁴ Sachs told the meeting that scientists “simply do not have the data they need to properly explore” how agriculture has changed the world. “We want to understand ecosystems and the people who are living in them,” Sachs said.

Good thinking. Sandy Andelman, of Conservation International, told the meeting about a pilot project in Tanzania.

In addition to basic environmental data about soils, nutrients and land cover, the project tracks agricultural practices. It also incorporates data about income, health and education that is maintained by the government. Andelman says that … initial results from the project have already prompted the Tanzanian government to adjust the way it zones agricultural land in the area.

That does sound good. I wonder, though, do the “agricultural practices” Andelman monitors have anything on the deliberate use of specific agricultural biodiversity to buffer against environmental shocks, or to enhance resilience in the face of pests and diseases, or to adapt to climate change? Maybe, though I’m not holding my breath. When Sachs first floated the idea, on which Andelman was a co-author, Luigi noted that it didn’t “mention the desirability of monitoring levels of agricultural biodiversity on-farm”.

Some of the meeting attendees want to go slow. The Gates Foundation thinks “a dozen or so” would be a good start to “get the ball rolling”. Sachs wants more. Nature News says he envisages “500 sites within two or three years”.

“We need to get this thing up and running,” he says, warning of the perils of endless organizational meetings. “I don’t want to spend ten years on this.”

Agreed, but it would be even worse, in my opinion, to build such a network, even if it does take 10 years, and not monitor the amount of agrobiodiversity and how farmers make use of it.

October 3, 2011October 3, 2011

Brainfood: Rice yield, Carrot evaluation, Caper chemistry, Rice fortification, Range shifts, Baobab, Tunisian thyme, Drought-tolerant rice

Rice yields and yield gaps in Southeast Asia: Past trends and future outlook. If average farmers became like best-yielding farmers that would meet 2050 needs, except in the Philippines, where some more structural stuff is needed.
Method of evaluating diversity of carrot roots using a self-organizing map and image data. The sound you hear is that of butterflies being broken on wheels.
Bioactive compounds from Capparis spinosa subsp. rupestris. Are pretty much the same as those in subsp. spinosa.
Constitutive Overexpression of the OsNAS Gene Family Reveals Single-Gene Strategies for Effective Iron- and Zinc-Biofortification of Rice Endosperm. So that’s a good thing, right?
Analysis of climate paths reveals potential limitations on species range shifts. Corridors not the answer. Or not the only answer. Or not the full answer.
An updated review of Adansonia digitata: A commercially important African tree. Do baobab scientists not sometimes long for the Time Before Reviews, when they actually, you know, did stuff?
Genetic diversity, population structure and relationships of Tunisian Thymus algeriensis Boiss. et Reut. and Thymus capitatus Hoffm. et Link. assessed by isozymes. Dad, what’s an isozyme? Ah, son, it’s a thing people used in the Time Before DNA. The two species are different, they need to be managed in different ways.
Potential Impact of Biotechnology on Adaption of Agriculture to Climate Change: The Case of Drought Tolerant Rice Breeding in Asia. Kinda pointless: “in severe drought both the [drought tolerant] and the conventional varieties were either not planted or, if planted, did not yield”.