Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

June 29, 2011July 1, 2011

Educate girls, plant a school garden, promote biodiversity

What’s not to like?

NewImage

This post is simply an abuse of authorial rights to promote a project. I just received the second project report from Educate 1300 Girls By Restoring A Marrakech Garden, which I am supporting via Global Giving. Why that project? Because it is relevant to me in all sorts of ways. Maybe to you too; they still need to raise about $15,000.

During the past academic year, thirty students conducted their own field research by interviewing Marrakechi herbalists about important cultural recipes. [The Global Diversity Foundation] is now organizing a database of the girls’ findings, titled, “An Ethnobotanical Study of Five Traditional Women’s Recipes.” In the autumn of this year, the girls will be able to re-examine, analyze, and discuss their own data. We hope that this will be the first of many such educational initiatives at Lalla Aouda Saadia.

I look forward to the next report, which I hope will tell me more about those traditional recipes, and to the garden’s continued growth.

June 29, 2011June 28, 2011

Plants galore

“Plants, their names and uses, their tradition and display are on stage worldwide.” Really? Yep, you’d be surprised…

June 28, 2011June 28, 2011

Commission headsup

Oh gosh, is that the Thirteenth Session of the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture coming over the horizon? Yep, sure looks like it. Only a couple of weeks away. Check out the various Background Study Papers on climate change. Lots of stuff on animal genetic resources. And, among the Working Documents, the Draft Revised Genebank Standards for the Conservation of Orthodox Seeds. Something for everyone indeed.

June 28, 2011June 27, 2011

Saving rice varieties in India

In view of the failure of all ex situ rice seed banks to protect the erosion of rice genetic diversity, CIS [Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies] established Vrihi (Sanskrit name of “rice”), the first non-governmental rice seed bank for farmers, in 1997. Coordinated by its founder Debal Deb, Vrihi Beej Binimoy Kendra is the largest non-governmental rice seed exchange centre in eastern India, established not only to promote cultivation of folk rice varieties, but also re-establish the vanishing culture of seed exchange.
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CIS gratefully acknowledges the funding support it received from RFSTE for Vrihi’s activities till March 2000. Since then, Vrihi has been running on its founder’s personal funding support and donations from friends, especially Dr. Paoloroberto Imperiali of Rome. His donation was instrumental in establishing a research farm, Basudha, where regular, in situ cultivation of all folk rice varieties began in 2001.

Very worthy, but unfortunately not all seems to be well. Vrihi Beej Binimoy Kendra moved this May, from Beliatore to Panchal. And now the farm operation has moved too, from Basudha to Kerandiguda in Odisha.

In 2010 we were able to save all the 686 varieties on Bhairab Saini’s farm, some 5 km away from Basudha. Bhairab sacrificed his farm plot for Basudha’s conservation work for the year, but we cannot take advantage of his generosity every year; besides, we must find a sustainable solution to conserve the nation’s wealth of vanishing rice varieties in situ… We have transferred all the rice seeds from Basudha’s accession to this new farm in Kerandiguda, and started sowing the seeds from the 16th June 2011, with the help of local villagers, and Living Farms, a local NGO. The sowing was finished on the 21st June.

Good luck to them, of course. But I can’t help thinking that “a sustainable solution to conserve the nation’s wealth of vanishing rice varieties” should include placing these 686 varieties in the genebanks at NBPGR and IRRI, pace the “failure of all ex situ rice seed banks to protect the erosion of rice genetic diversity.”And not necessarily growing all of them out every year at CIS’s farm, given some basic seed storage technology. But I don’t know enough about the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies and it’s seed saving operation. Maybe our Indian readers can tell us more.

June 28, 2011June 27, 2011

US national programme gets it together

beltsville — USDA's Beltsville Agricultural Research Center

The Plant Germplasm Operations Committee gets together every year to help the National Plant Germplasm System of the USA operate. It has just had its 2011 meeting in Beltsville, MD, with representatives from the national genebanks of Brazil, Mexico and Canada in attendance, and the presentations are online. They provide an interesting glimpse into the workings of a national system which in many ways serves the whole world.