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The ITPGRFA explained, at last

Developments in international and national law and policy over the past 15 years have significantly changed the working environment for those who make decisions about plant genetic resources. For example, activities such as collecting samples now require an understanding of access legislation, while plant genetic resources research cannot be undertaken without considering relevant intellectual property rights.

One of the most important of these developments is the adoption of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and its Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA), the focus of a new online learning module published today by Bioversity International.

And very welcome it is too.

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Mashing up 3d trees and crop wild relatives

I’ve been exploring Google’s 3d trees thing a bit, to work out just how cool it is. I said in my previous post on this that it could eventually be used to document and virtually explore field genebanks (of coconuts, say, or breadfruit). But of course you can explore a few forests around the world right now, so I wondered if any crop wild relatives have been collected in any of these places.

The answer is, alas, no, at least for Surui Forest in Brazil, one of the couple of “wild” places for which Google currently has 3d trees (the others are urban areas). At left you can see the distribution of accessions of crop wild relatives in Brazil, according to Genesys. Unfortunately, none fall within the area for which Google has 3d data.

I did get a hit in GBIF for a cultivated cassava just outside the forest. But that’s not quite the same, I agree. Oh well, maybe we’ll soon have more data. 1

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Earth Engine and crop wild relatives

The other recent Google Earth innovation is Earth Engine, where you can check out a bunch of interesting visualizations of environmental data. Spurred by something Julian said, I downloaded the MODIS VCF global tree cover change dataset (2000-2005). And then I went to Genesys and downloaded data on wild beans (Phaseolus spp). It was not very difficult to put the two together in Google Earth. In the map below, which just looks at central Mexico, orange means high deforestation, and green afforestation. Is it me, or do germplasm accession seem to be concentrated in areas of high deforestation? Anyway, with a little work, this could be a cheap and cheerful way to identify particularly threatened areas for germplasm collecting.

mexico

Who wants to be the first to put crop wild relatives data in Earth Engine?

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The revival of taro biodiversity in Hawaii, in film

This just in from a reader in Hawaii. Thanks, Penny.

The film short “Na Ono o Ka Aina; Delicacies of the Land” featuring Jerry Konanui, a Hawaiian, expert in the identification of traditional Hawaiian taro cultivars, and an inspiration in their recovery. This film is the work of award winning Hawaii-based filmmakers, Na Maka o Ka Aina. The film garnered awards at the Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Hawaii film festivals in 2009 and 2010, and the short was featured on National Geographic’s “All Roads Film Festival” in 2008. One way to protect local crop biodiversity — reinspire everyone — from farmers to researchers to students; especially within the community that once created that diversity. It’s in the numbers; the more old cultivars we recover and grow and the more who grow, the less risk of loss we will have. You can get a taste of the film short — and the ono (delicious) taros of Hawaii below.