Our colleague Ms Mei Jiun Kwek from the CFF Secretariat just came back from Wikimania 2012, an annual conference of Wikipedians that took place 12-14 July 2012, at George Washington University, D.C. We are grateful to Wikimedia Foundation for providing Mei Jiun with a full travel grant, in recognition for her efforts over the last 10 months to add content to Wikipedia on underutilised crops and related topics. CFF has learned a lot from her experience with editing articles and placing high-quality images in the public domain. Wikimania was a tremendous opportunity for her to liaise with fellow Wikipedians from all walks of life, and she came back fully confirmed in her strong belief that Wikipedia, despite its success, is still an underused tool for knowledge dissemination in our community.

Despite the problems Wikipedia is currently facing, the encyclopaedia is ever more becoming the premier entry point for the world’s knowledge. Google for any crop name, scientific or vernacular, and it is rather unlikely you will not be referred to the Wikipedia article on the subject in the first place. It is here where references to your work will be noticed, and where you can contribute content read by more people from diverse backgrounds than on most corporate or personal webpages. Instead of writing the umpteenth fact sheet on crop x, should we not consider improving the relevant Wikipedia article? Rather than keeping our opinions and the knowledge in our publications to a close circle of specialists, have we considered adding that knowledge to Wikipedia? We are here not arguing to use Wikipedia for personal or corporate promotion, a futile undertaking in any case, since the encyclopaedia has processes in place to prevent such abuse.

The challenge for CFF will be to further learn how as a community of crop diversity specialists we can use Wikipedia and other Internet tools to facilitate the access to dispersed but relevant knowledge and also make it available to the general public, which are major institutional objectives for CFF. We will need to communicate to our stakeholders how contributing knowledge to Wikipedia can result in considerable benefits for those engaging in that activity. In future issues of this newsletter we will also share with you news about specific skills, training modules and resource pages to help future agrobiodiversity Wikipedians to engage in collective knowledge management. Stay tuned!

Probing durian for fruit quality, near Cirebon, Java

It would seem it isn’t. After all, durian is a significant fruit in its native range, Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, for example, it ranks first  –in volume and value- amongst all domestically produced fruit. In recent years, China, where the crop is not traditionally known, has begun to develop a taste for durian imported from Thailand, which had a trade value of US$70 million in 2010. Tourism operators (in Malaysia) sell with increasing success travel packages that include tasting tours to durian plantations. Occasionally, durian makes for good headlines, such as the story of a Macau billionaire reported to fly in his personal durian supplies on a private jet.

So, on the surface of it, things seem to be going pretty well for durian. However, we think the crop could be doing even better, indeed much better…

To begin with, durian still has a reputational problem. Articles, such as this one, misleadingly titled “Surviving Durian“, and others comparing durian to smelly feet, sewer and other fetid odours perpetuate “Western prejudice”. Rather than apologising for durian’s aroma, and banning it from hotels, in Asia we should be celebrating the “king of fruits” as an emblematic product of the region. Durian aromas are as varied and complex as those of wine, cocoa or coffee, but developing an appreciation for this complexity is a learning process, and will require a specific vocabulary to describe and communicate specific qualities. Calls for developing “improved” durian varieties with bland flavours abound, but this is like asking for Roquefort cheese with its characteristic aroma removed. Bon appétit!

Secondly, the success of trading rather undifferentiated “commodity” durian from a few clonal varieties –unimaginatively referred to by their clonal selection IDs such as “D24”- leads to the replacement of “durian kampung”, the seed-propagated “village durians” that fetch only low prices owing to their varying and inconsistent quality. Each fruit needs to be opened and probed to judge its quality, and traders and consumers are clearly finding this cumbersome (see picture). Our field observations suggest that durian kampung trees are now being chopped down all over Southeast Asia on a massive scale, and replaced (or grafted) with clonal material. Paradoxically, durian’s success as a commodity erodes the resource base, upon which current sales are based: all “superior” clonal varieties are not the result of breeding efforts, but have been identified amongst elite kampung trees.

Thirdly, we believe that a great opportunity to differentiate durian into a high-value product, permitting greater rural incomes and providing incentives for conservation, is being wasted. Durian in the narrow sense refers to Durio zibethinus, which has much intra-specific diversity of flavour, texture and colour, but there are another eight Durio species with edible fruits that are hardly ever traded outside their native range. There is circumstantial evidence for significant interaction of genetics, location and crop management, which provides scope for the development of durian “terroirs” with unique qualities that may even be deserving of product protection through geographic indications.

In conclusion, we believe that durian is indeed a neglected and under-utilised species: overlooked by science, with much differentiation potential that remains unappreciated by markets and researchers, unprotected from genetic erosion, and suffering from a general lack of development vision.

Quinoa farmer in Cachilaya

The UN has recently declared 2013 the International Year of Quinoa turning the world’s attention on this native Andean grain, which has good nutritional value and a long history of use by native Andean communities. UN resolution 66/221 also hints at the income opportunities that have resulted from the strongly growing demand of quinoa in export markets, especially in the health food segment. In Bolivia, the main quinoa producing country, the export (FOB) value of quinoa was US$ 46 million in 2011, up from US$ 2 million in 2000 (source: MAGDER, Bolivia), translating into an average annual growth rate of 33%!

Quinoa’s success hasn’t all been plain sailing though. News of soaring domestic quinoa prices to levels at which poor Bolivians can no longer afford the “superfood”, have even been picked up by international media. However, complaints about the alienation of Andean people from their traditional diets mostly ignore that quinoa has never been a significant staple in the Andes and is inconvenient to use. Moreover, income from high-value export quinoa allows rural producers to diversify their diets in terms of greater meat and vegetable consumption. On a weight basis, quinoa is nutritionally superior to other common starchy grains in the Andes such as wheat and rice, but a dollar spent on these commodities, because of their much lower cost, buys significantly more protein, energy and even minerals.

Much more worrisome than nutritional concerns seems to be the resource degradation believed by some to have accompanied the quinoa boom of the last few years, as described in a paper by Sven Jacobsen of the University of Copenhagen. His description of expansion of quinoa cultivation into unsuited and sloped land, the use of deep ploughing of fragile soils, and soil mining has been rebuked by Winkel et al. (2012), but it resonates with our own travel impressions and other reports of declining quinoa yields and increasing soil erosion in the Southern Bolivian Altiplano.

Despite a growing perception of the decline in soil fertility of quinoa growing areas, commercially motivated demands abound that the “purity” of quinoa production be maintained, and that only organic fertilisers be used in quinoa production as required by “organic” quality standards in export markets. However, animal dung in the Altiplano is often scarce or unavailable, and because of shortened or non-existent fallow periods, it is plausible that there is net extraction of nutrients from the soil. It would be worth a study to determine, whether in the name of certified organic production methods so dear to distant quinoa consumers, the application of rational and science-based fertilisation practices -including the use of mineral fertilisers to replenish nutrients removed by harvested produce- is being prevented?

The organising committee of the First International Symposium on Jackfruit and other Moraceae is now making the final call for registration.

The symposium is scheduled to be held at Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, from 31 August to 2 September 2012. The purpose of the symposium is not only for participants to share progress in research and development of jackfruit and other Moraceae, but also to discuss emerging issues, problems and threats of the use of these species, and to ensure their continued production for food security and poverty alleviation in developing countries.

Please download the symposium circular for more information by clicking here

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) offers two-year fellowships to women agricultural scientists who are citizens of Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, or Zambia. AWARD fellows will benefit from different training courses and career development resources.

Deadline for application is 7 September 2012.

Visit this website for more information on the application.