Henry M. “Hank” Beachell shared the World Food Prize in 1996 with Gurdev Khush. Both IRRI rice breeders, they were responsible for breeding the first Green Revolution dwarf rice variety, IR8. IRRI’s channel on youtube has just posted an excerpt from a USDA-National Agricultural Library (NAL) video project called Precious Seeds which tells his story. The money quote: “…cooking quality was secondary, milling quality was secondary, the main thing was rice production.”
Visionary carp farming
The Ecologist has nominated its “10 visionaries with 10 big ideas for a better world.” The full article is behind a paywall, but the names are there, and Jimmie Hepburn gets the nod in agriculture.
That was a new name on me, but he and his wife Penny turn out to have become celebrities of a sort in the UK for running an organic aquaculture business in Devon.
“There’s great interest in the fish,” said Jimmie. “The truth is that we have forgotten how to eat fish like carp. In medieval times they were very popular. Now they are usually grown to huge proportions for anglers who take a photo of them and throw them back. Hardly anyone thinks of them as food.”
Congratulations to the Hepburns.
Barking up the right tree
The new NWFP-Digest is out. That’s only if you get it by email, however. It’ll be on the website ((FAO’s link is dead.)) in a couple of days. As ever, lots of interesting links, but the one that really caught my eye was an article on the success of Ugandan bark cloth on the international fashion scene. It was named a “masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity” by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2005. Called lubugu, it is made from the bark of Ficus natalensis. Interestingly, this species is an invasive in Hawaii. Elsewhere in the Pacific, they make bark cloth — tapa — from Broussonetia papyrifera, but the dyes come from a Ficus, among other species.
Asking the tough questions
- If, 10,000 years ago, Neolithic plant breeders had domesticated another plant that would have today produced a highly desirable crop, what would that be, and is it too late to start now?
- How can we combine traditional plant breeding techniques, biotechnology and GMOs to prepare the world’s crop plants for oncoming climate change?
- How can we retain biodiversity in crop resources?
- Will every farmer in the world be able to get a crop genotype specifically produced to get the best from his/her field?
- Given the medium to long term unsustainability of oil-based high input industrial agriculture, should we be developing high yielding perennials to replace existing annuals?
Some of the questions submitted to the Journal of Experimental Botany from which will be selected the 100 most important questions facing plant science. And they’re pretty good questions. I found them by searching for “crop” and “agriculture.” The tag line for the survey — and title of the CABI blog entry which pointed me to it — is: How can plant scientists change the world? Go on and submit your own ideas. Conservation of agrobiodiversity does not seem to be particularly well served thus far. You’ve got until the end of March.
Alugbati et al.
[A]lugbati, ampalaya, bavok-bayok, himbabao, kulitis, labong, upo, malunggay, pako, saluyot, talinum, talong, amaranths, cucurbits, radish, luffa, wax gourd, snake gourd, squash, jute, basella, kangkong, ivy gourd, basil, lablab, rosella, okra, yardlong bean, winged bean, cucumber, tomato, and vegetable soybean.
Wha’ the? If you recognized those as vegetables, well, no big deal. If you recognized them as Filipino names for vegetables, you get extra points. The list comes from an article at Agriculture Business Week on Growing Indigenous Vegetables: Answer to Rural Malnutrition and Poverty. It’s about a new project from the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Centre (AVRDC) and it goes into considerable detail about the reasons for the project and its achievements to date. If anyone from AVRDC would like to tell about the project elsewhere, we’re listening.