Posts

Posted on

An Indian Svalbard in the Himalayas

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) signed Memorandum of Agreement for conservation of plant genetic resources in the National Permafrost Repository at Chang-La, Leh, Ladakh (J&K).

So India now has its very own seed vault in the permafrost. The above is from an ICAR press release from a couple of days ago. But The Hindu reported on the Permafrost Repository as long ago as early last year. This photograph is from that article, so things may have changed since then.

It’s not altogether clear to me why India would wish to do this, when it can send safety duplicates of its material to Svalbard for free and under black box conditions, but anyway.

Posted on

Mapping potato genetic resources

And speaking of genetic erosion:

Land use tendencies between 1997 and 2005 shows that the total cropping area dedicated to improved cultivars has grown fast while the area reserved for native-floury and native-bitter landrace has remained more or less stable. Reduced fallow periods for existing fields and the gradual incorporating of high-altitude virgin pasture lands sustain areal growth. While areas of improved cultivars are proportionally growing fastest at extremely high altitudes between 3,900 and 4,350 m of altitude, overall cropping intensity or fallowing rates are inversely related to altitude. No evidence of a straightforward replacement of one cultivar category by another was found.

That’s from the winners of the third prize at the SCGIS/ESRI/SCB International Conservation Mapping Contest, Traditional Cartography section: CIP’s Henry Saul Juarez Soto, with Franklin Plasencia and Stef de Haan. Worth reading the whole thing.

Posted on

Pangusa njaa haraka

“We tell farmers that diversifying to more drought resistant crops is key to cope with the changing climate,” Leakey says. To encourage them, she offers a “Leldet Bouquet”: Instead of 2kg maize seeds costing 300 Kenyan shillings ($3), the farmer can get a mix of five seed packets with an equivalent weight of cowpeas, sorghum, beans, pigeon pea, millet and maize. The mix of crops in the “bouquet” is adapted to the farmer’s location.

That’s from an AlterNet story from a few days ago, but we blogged about the Leldet seed company back in June. Now, how cool would it be to get some genebank samples into those Leldet Bouquets? Or maybe even the mother-in-law’s maize…

Posted on

A tale of genetic erosion narrowly averted

What causes genetic erosion? People in our business are way too fond of making lists of all the things that can possibly lead to a farmer abandoning a variety. But sometimes it’s just down to an accident. Take my mother-in-law. Please. No, but seriously, this is an interesting example of the law of unintended consequences. Bear with me. The mother-in-law grows some hybrid maize on her spread in the Limuru highlands of Kenya. Here she is with a bag of the stuff, which she likes, despite the recurrent cost, because of the large cobs.

But she also grows a local landrace which she says goes back to before independence. It doesn’t yield as much, but it has thick juicy stems, and she needs that for her cows. So she grows both the hybrid and the landrace, not mixed up in the same field, but often side by side. Would be interesting to look at the geneflow that’s been happening up there over the years, but that’s not the point of this story.

The point of the story is in fact that she almost lost the landrace recently. What happened is that last year she came to visit us in Rome for a few months, and left the farm in the otherwise quite capable hands of her daughter-in-law. Problem is, Violet, unaware of the preciousness of the landrace seed, went and fed most of it to the family. Fortunately, a handful or so survived, and quickly went into the ground for multiplication when grandma returned. You can see it here above. A close-run thing indeed. She says she would have been very upset if she had lost that seed, and asked me whether I could get it into Svalbard. After all, is that not my boss holding some seeds in front of the Vault? Well, yes, but…

Posted on

Harvesting the bounty of weedy greens

That’s Violet, my sister-in-law. She’s harvesting weedy indigenous leafy greens from her (and my) mother-in-law’s farm at Gataka, near Limuru in Kenya. And talking to me about these interesting species at the same time. She’s mainly picking “terere” (Amaranthus hybridus), though she mentions “togotia” (Erucastrum arabicum) towards the end. Also “kahorora,” or pumpkin leaves, though of course that’s not a weedy species. Thanks, Violet.