Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

September 2, 2010September 2, 2010

Talking about an African Green Revolution

The African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) focuses on promoting investments and policy support for driving agricultural productivity and income growth for African farmers in an environmentally sustainable way. The Forum, which stems from the African Green Revolution Conference in Oslo, is a private-sector led initiative which will bring together African heads of state, ministers, farmers, private agribusiness firms, financial institutions, NGOs, civil society and scientists, to discuss and develop concrete investment plans for achieving the green revolution in Africa.

It’s going on right now, and it’s getting the full social networking treatment. If you want to share corridor gossip, you know where to find us.

LATER: By the way, AGRA, one of the organizers, has also just started a blog.

September 1, 2010

More Pavlovsk on the web

There’s a very good report from Pavlovsk on Al Jazeera’s youtube channel.

My only objection is to the reference to Pavlovsk as “one of only two botanical repositories on the planet.” And since we’re being all multimedia and social networky, I’ll also mention the photos on the Global Crop Diversity Trust’s Facebook page, which could do with — and are in fact receiving — some user-provided value-added.

August 31, 2010

Carnival marks end of summer

And a big welcome to all of you who have ended up here from the 31st Berry-Go-Round. Have fun! Everybody else, off you go to Seeds Aside.

August 30, 2010

Not the wheat genome sequence

The International Wheat Genome Sequence Consortium, an international consortium of wheat growers, public and private breeders and scientists, strongly disagrees with implications that the sequence reads made available by a UK team, led by Professor Neil Hall, represent in any way the sequence of the wheat genome or that this work is comparable to genome sequences for rice, maize, or soybean.

Ouch. Via.

August 30, 2010August 30, 2010

Evolution takes place in agricultural ecosystems too

Evolutionary Applications has a Special Issue out devoted to “Evolution in Agro-Ecosystems. ” Attentive readers will spot the fact that we have already blogged about the papers on why there are no perennial grain crops and on the response of landraces to climate change. But there’s a lot more there.