Our friend, colleague and occasional contributor Andy Jarvis has just won GBIF’s prestigious Ebbe Nielsen Prize for 2009 for “combining biosystematics and biodiversity informatics research in an exciting and novel way”. A lot of his work has been on the spatial analysis of the geographic distributions of crop wild relatives, with a view to developing strategies and priorities for their conservation, in particular in the context of climate change. A lot, but far from all: Andy is nothing if not versatile, and his interests extend to the whole of agrobiodiversity. A recent interview with Andy, and others, tries to answer the question “why maps?”. Congratulations to Andy!
US readies itself for Roquefort flood
The iniquitous 300% tariffs imposed by the last administration on Roquefort cheese are to go. The sterling campaigning efforts of the Société Roquefort have thus been deservedly rewarded. Good news for American cheese lovers. And Occitan shepherds. Let agrobiodiversity and its products be free!
What gives wine its taste
It’s good practice to throw garbage into your vineyard, apparently. Always has been. Don’t believe me? Read the article, watch the video.
Royal oxen turn up their noses
“This means we will have plenty of the corn and beans, but a poor rice harvest,” astrologer Kang Ken announced after the ceremony which was presided over by King Norodom Sihamoni.
VIR at war
I’m going to have to take back what I said about English Russia. Just a couple of days after it featured old photos of Russian agriculture, today there’s more of agrobiodiversity interest. Sergei Larenkov mashes up images of modern St Petersburg with photos taken during the siege. Below is one of St Isaac’s Square. There are several others. It was a cabbage patch during the war. The building in the middle is — and was — part of the Vavilov Institute.
Compare it with the picture I took recently.