Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

Mary at Open Helix points to Dorothy at The Book of Trogool who says we should all take a look at Canadensys (hohoho). Dorothy says that Canadensys “is trying to collect biodiversity information from various researcher networks”. Canadensys says:

The mission of Canadensys is to unlock the specimen information held by Canadian university-based biological collections and share this via a network of distributed databases, compatible with other biodiversity information networks like CBIF and GBIF. In its initial phase, the network focuses on data of three of the most diverse, ecologically and economically important groups of organisms: plants, insects and fungi, the latter two representing some of the most poorly understood and inventoried organisms world-wide.

As Dorothy further points out, “their technical infrastructure is very much “use what you have; build only what you must”. Gosh, that sounds like a plan.

Big questions await intrepid database explorers. How are they dealing with agriculture? Might this become another gateway out of GBDBHell? Go ahead and rush in where I fear to tread.

The Crop Science Society of America recently announced its annual awards, to be presented at the Society’s annual meetings in Pittsburgh on 3 November, next week. We couldn’t be happier about the Calvin Sperling Biodiversity Memorial Lectureship, which goes to our friend and sometime blogger here, Robert. J. Hijmans. As the announcement says,

“Robert Hijmans is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California-Davis. … His program focuses mainly on modeling of the spatial and temporal dynamics of natural and cultivated biodiversity, agricultural geography and development, and spatial informatics.”

His lecture promises to be fascinating. If you’re in Pittsburgh for the CSSA meetings, go. Will technology allow us to share it?

There are some other awards in there that recognize the importance of agricultural biodiversity.

• José F. M. Valls picks up the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources for his work on the collection, conservation, and characterization of forage grass and wild peanut germplasm.
• Maarten Van Ginkel, of ICARDA in Syria, gets the International Service in Crop Science Award. He contributed to breeding more than 100 bread wheat varieties.
• And, illustrating yet again the truth of Matthew 25:29, the CSSA Presidential Award goes to Gebisa Ejeta of Purdue University, winner of this year’s World Food Prize. Not that we begrudge him the honour for a second.

Congratulations to all the winners.