Actually, I didn’t even know there was a Plant Conservation Day. BCGI put me on to it. And it does seem to be a celebration very much focused on botanic gardens. But why shouldn’t genebanks and heirloom gardeners and others interested in agrobiodiversity get in on the act too? We’ve got a couple of months to think up things to do…
Iron-tolerant rice
SciDev.net reports on a fascinating trial set to begin in May. Researchers in West Africa have selected about 80 different rice varieties from genebanks around the world. These will be planted in iron-rich soils in four countries: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea and Nigeria to see how they survive. Iron at the levels found in the trial plots would normally kill high-yielding rice varieties. The researchers will be looking for the five best varieties in each plot, and will be assisted in their search by local farmers who have agreed to participate in the variety selection. The best-performing varieties will then be given to the farmers to grow using their normal methods, to see whether they outperform traditional varieties.
An interesting aspect of the trial seems to be that the researchers are not looking for high-iron rice, which might help to address chronic anaemia. They want varieties that will yield well on high-iron soils, even if the rice itself remains iron poor. Increasing the mineral content (notably iron and zinc) of cereal crops remains an important breeding goal, complicated by the arcane relationships between soil levels, genotype, other soil chemistry and, probably, phases of the moon. There is impressive variation among accessions of wheat wild relatives and several methods have already been tried to make high-iron rice, which does actually reduce anemia. There are also traditional rice varieties that are high in iron.
Neat rum
There’s only one rum that can put Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) on its label, apparently. It is Martinique’s Rhum Agricole, and it has a fascinating history. Via.
Department of Silver Linings, part 387
Yes, sure, climate change will cause sea level rise, which is going to be bad for places like Bangladesh and its rice and shrimp farmers, who will all end up in Dhaka. But. Yep, there might actually be a but. The same climate change is also causing increased flows of water — and, crucially, suspended sediment — from Himalayan glaciers. All you have to do is damn up the water and the silt will build up the land, counteracting the rise in sea level. With any luck, the net result will be stasis. And farmers can keep farming. Until the glaciers run out, that is.
Browsing Princeton’s image library
A short note in Global Voices sent me to the Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts in search of anything vaguely botanical or agricultural. I found a treatise on botany with charming watercolours of many different plants, some cultivated. Perhaps someone out there who can read classical Arabic can tell us the gist.
Roaming a little further around the Princeton Digital Collections I also came across the Western Americana Photographs Collection, which has some really fascinating stuff. I had no idea that Indians stored acorns in specially constructed caches, for example. But it seems to have been a common practice in the Yosemite Valley.