Mr El-Sayed Mohamed El-Azazi, Executive Director of the Egyptian Deserts Gene Bank, has posted a comment to one of our previous posts about the looting of his genebank. It includes a link the following presentation on what the place looked like before the fateful day. The call has gone out for help replacing lost equipment. One can only hope it will be heeded.
Agrobiodiversity conservation on Brazilian TV
Thanks to DAD-Net, news of eight TV programmes about conservation of animal genetic resources in Brazil. English subtitles, anyone?
1. Introduction to the series
3. Pantaneiro horse and Pantaneiro cattle
5. Moura pig
6. Horses raised in the Marajó Island (Amazon region)
8. Buffaloes raised in the Marajó Island (Amazon region)
European agrobiodiversity meet in the offing
The 6th European Forum on Agricultural Biodiversity will take place from February 25-26 in Szeged, Hungary. The programme looks fun. And they were kind enough to include us on their page of links. We’re more than happy to reciprocate. As ever, there’s space here for anyone who wants to report on the event.
Agricultural data made easier
How many time does it happen that you see something like this picture
and you immediately ask yourself: What kind of yields are we talking about anyway? Just ballpark, mind. But what would constitute a good yield for these farmers looking at different millet landraces and varieties during this field day?
Well, of course there is FAOStat, but that can be clunky. And those colours! So now the good people at HarvestChoice have developed a little widget that makes access to some of FAOStat’s data a lot less painful, including on the eyes. It’s called HappyStat, and this is what it says about millet yields in India:
| Yield, kg ha-1 (Growth Rate, % yr-1) |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crop, Country | 1965 | 1975 | 1985 | 1995 | 2005 |
| MILLET in INDIA |
345 | 554 (2.82) | 457 (0.14) | 679 (4.31) | 750 (1.63) |
| Source: Aggregated from FAOSTAT 2006 |
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Ah, but which millet I hear you ask. And won’t yields differ in different parts of the country? One step at a time, Grasshopper, one step at a time.
LATER: Oh, and by the way, when are we going to see FAOStat data googleized?
The wildness on your sofa
The question of what is the difference between the domestic pig and a wild boar, or the distinction between a broiler chicken and a wild jungle fowl is very similar to the question of what is the difference between a human and a chimpanzee.
Well, maybe. But Evan Ratliff’s piece in National Geographic is an entertaining summary of those distinctions, and of the different possible ways in which they may have come about.
It also reminded me of a great quote from another, much older National Geographic article, which is actually quite relevant again now. 1 Talking about using crop wild relatives, a breeder interviewed by the late Bob Rhoades for The World’s Food Supply at Risk in 1991 says this:
It’s a bit like crossing a house cat with a wildcat. You don’t automatically get a big docile pussycat. What you get is a lot of wildness that you probably don’ t want lying on your sofa.