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Featured: More fermentation

Raymond also weighs in on fermentation, sounding a warning:

Pablo is right when he says that many species in West and Central Africa are noteworthy for their use as fermented staple foods. Genetic diversity plays important role in this as not all varieties give good quality products. Unfortunately some old varieties known for their high value in fermentation are disappearing for their limited yield potential. They are being replaced with high yielding but poor quality modern varieties. Studies also revealed that cropping practices (type and quantity of fertilizer, chemicals used etc.) may impact on the quality of products.

Meanwhile, in another part of the world, canning is making a comeback.

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Dancing for agrobiodiversity

I’m reliably informed by my friend and colleague Ehsan Dulloo, who should know, that this Mauritian sega by Gilbert Narainsamy called “Plante Plante” is promoting homegarden planting and sharing agrobiodiversity with neighbours. Sounds good to me!

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Conference roundup

We’ve mentioned all of these before, probably multiple times, but let’s do it again. There are two important global conferences coming up in late August.

Then later in the year there’s another humdinger. It’s like a perfect agrobiodiversity gabfest storm.

As ever, we’re very happy to hear from participants, either as it happens or after the dust settles.

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More on that new Turkish genebank

You may remember a post a few weeks back on a new genebank being planned by the Turkish government, about which I had some questions. Well, Agriculture & Rural Affairs Minister Mehmet Mehdi Eker will kick off building work on July 30. 1 In a statement, the Ministry said:

…we need to assess the current situation in order to protect our biological diversity and genetic sources. There are about 10 thousand plant species and nearly 3 thousand endemic plant species in Turkey. Also, Turkey is considered a center to find genes of a number of plant species which are of great importance for biological researches. Therefore, we decided to establish a seed gene bank in Turkey. The bank will contain genes of 250 thousand plant species.

I suppose that means 250,000 accessions. It sounds to me like this genebank may concentrate on wild species, unlike the one in Izmir. But I’m not sure. Maybe someone out there will give us more details.