Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

September 27, 2011

Sorghum and ethnicity in Africa

Ever since I contributed to A methodological model for ecogeographic surveys of crops, and suggested that collectors should do this, I’ve been waiting for the time when it would be easy — or even possible — to map the distribution of conserved germplasm on top of cultural, ethnic or language boundaries. The problem has been that maps of such boundaries, ¹ though available in various printed formats, have not been much digitized. Or at least I hadn’t come across them. Until I happened on a blog post about the Center for Geographic Analysis’ (Harvard University) WorldMap, an open source web mapping system. The layers provided include one called Ethnicity Felix 2001, which “consist of polygons and labels depicting ethnicity information based on the ‘People’s Atlas of Africa’ by Marc Felix and Charles Meur, Copyright 2001.” Perfect, I thought.

uganda sorghum — Sorghum accessions (Genesys) and ethnic groups in Uganda.

Well, not so fast. It was not altogether easy to download a shapefile of conserved African sorghum landraces from Genesys that would upload into WorldMap, plonk it on top of Ethnicity Felix 2001 and produce a shareable map. Not easy, but possible. It took some time and some divine intervention from Robert, but I do now have a map of African ethnic groups and sorghum collections that other people can have a look at. At left you have a snippet showing Uganda to whet your appetite. So now, in addition to things like ecogeographic gaps in collections, made possible by global climate surfaces, we can also begin to investigate cultural gaps.

September 26, 2011September 26, 2011

Now that’s what I call a celebration of biodiversity

Viehscheidgirl320
What goes up, must come down. Alpine farmers who take their livestock to higher pastures in the spring bring them down for the winter. The Human Flower Project shares the celebratory mood.

September 26, 2011September 26, 2011

Brainfood: Breeding resistance, Pastures, Wheats, Dates, Conservation, Habitats, Old olives, Spinach selection, Maize breeding

Cytological and Molecular Characterization of Homoeologous Group-1 Chromosomes in Hybrid Derivatives of a Durum Disomic Alien Addition Line. Getting tolerance to Fusarium head blight into durum wheat ain’t easy.
Sustainable, low-input, warm-season, grass–legume grassland mixtures: mission (nearly) impossible? Apparently really difficult to find native North America legume forage species tolerant of both freezing and high temperatures, but people are looking. Gotta wonder if it’s a problem elsewhere too. Ethiopian highlands?
Diversity of different farmer and modern wheat varieties cultivated in contrasting organic farming conditions in western Europe and implications for European seed and variety legislation. Strong selection for uniformity (for regulation) is not reflected in uniformity assessed on farm. And farmer varieties were good outside their region of origin.
Glycaemic index of three Indian rice varieties. All three the same, high, GI. So, “There is an urgent need to study the GI of other commonly consumed rice varieties and to develop rice of a lower GI value”. Er, right.
Glycemic indices of five varieties of dates in healthy and diabetic subjects. All five the same, low, GI and no difference in diabetics.
Agricultural expansion and the fate of global conservation priorities. Conservation needs to think about agriculture.
Which habitats of European importance depend on agricultural practices? 63 of them, mainly through grazing and mowing.
Centennial olive trees as a reservoir of genetic diversity. Only about 10% of old trees matched current cultivars.
Phenotypic Changes in Different Spinach Varieties Grown and Selected under Organic Conditions. There were phenotypic changes after just three seasons of selection, in one case resulting in a “new” variety.
Open-Pollinated vs. Hybrid Maize Cultivars. Hybrids are not the only way to improve maize productivity, apparently.
Plant breeding for harmony between agriculture and the environment. “Plant breeding can be a powerful tool to bring “harmony” between agriculture and the environment, but partnerships between plant breeders, ecologists, urban planners, and policy makers are needed to make this a reality.” I was just going to ask, why can’t we all just get along.

Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here. Even if you don’t use Mendeley, you can subscribe to the RSS feed from the group and get stuff that way.

September 25, 2011September 25, 2011

Khan you say agrobiodiversity educational videos?

The Economist’s hymn of praise for the Khan Academy naturally sent me over to explore those of their 2,400 educational videos that had anything to do with agricultural biodiversity. And there, between Logarithmic Scale and Proof by Induction in the New & Noteworthy section, I did indeed find Firestick Farming. But that, good as it was, alas, was all. At least for now.

September 25, 2011September 25, 2011

In-flight agrobiodiversity entertainment

Interesting to see that one can watch the germplasm collecting documentary Seed Hunter on Turkish Airlines now. That must count as some form of mainstream.