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Development Marketplace

The World Bank’s Development Marketplace opens its doors on Tuesday 10 November. The idea is “to identify 20 to 25 innovative, early-stage projects addressing climate adaptation” and support them with grants of up to USD 200,000.

You may remember that last year our friend Hannes Dempewolf was one of the winners. 1 Is there anything this year of interest to agricultural biodiversity? Hard to say, mostly because the list of 100 finalists is available only as a PDF and doesn’t give a whole heap of information, but on past form, there’s bound to be. The Development Marketplace blog may be the place to follow the action, and if you’re around the World Bank, and have registered at the Marketplace’s web site, why not visit and send us your predictions of likely winners?

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Featured: Breeding

Dave Wood says lets not rush into breeding for climate change:

There are three distinct existing resources we can tap.
The first is the ability of crops to thrive after long-distance introduction. …
The second resource is the really vast data base from up to 50 years of multi-locational trials carried out as a matter of course by CGIAR institutes. …
The third resource is climate-matching. …

You need to read his examples. And when you have, you may find you agree. Or not.

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Agricultural biodiversity at the Diversitas conference

Harry Biggs, of South African National Parks, was at the recent Diversitas conference in Cape Town, and summarized his impressions on the conference web site: What I learnt from the Diversitas conference.. The stuff we wanted to hear:

Achim Steiner (now Exec Director UNEP) spent his keynote talking about how development and conservation have to, and can, find constructive mutuality. He is concerned that much of the renewed development drive is actually re-initiating old formulae which are not sustainable. At the meeting there was considerable emphasis on appropriate agro-biodiversity and dove-tailing of needs. He also feels that as a community we still see climate change (whatever we think about it) as a hindrance or competitive force to our agenda, rather than as an opportunity.

Here’s Steiner’s speech. Was anyone else listening?

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Round and round the money goes

There’s something very weird about this story, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. According to a press release from the University of Texas at Austin, researchers there have just been given USD 4.6 million “to study impact of climate change on potential biofuel source”. The potential biofuel source is switchgrass, which may, one-day, provide useful amounts of ethanol. But hang on. The reason switchgrass is suddenly interesting is that is could substitute for petroleum. And that’s a good idea because it might slow the emission of greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide. So they’re going to study how climate change affects switchgrass, which may alter climate change, which may change the use of switchgrass?

My head’s reeling. Someone help me.

Actually, it’s not really about the impact of climate change. That’s a big part of the headline and a small part of the study, which is more about how different switchgrass varieties perform under different conditions, especially on the more marginal land that is most likely to be used for growing biofuels. The researchers will also be asking how the different varieties respond to the different growing conditions that are predicted under different climate change scenarios.

Oh no, the spinning sensation, it’s starting again.

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Mo’ better tuber news

Apropos Rhizowen’s hymn to “the connection between a convolvulaceous bearing crop, a folk-blues artist and a cetacean” which we nibbled a couple of days ago, news of further consternation in the tuberous ranks. The National Agricultural Library of the USDA, no less, riffs on a poem called Yam, by Ted Kooser. 2 Mary Ann Leonard uses it to sort her sweet potatoes from her yams, and both from Irish potatoes, which we all know aren’t from Ireland. Fun.