Touted as the “first comprehensive resource worldwide that reflects research achievements in neglected and underutilized crop biotechnology,” a new Springer book has come out that covers Chenopodium, Jatropha, Carthamus, taro and other species. We can’t tell whether the hard copy is worth the 170 Euro price tag, but if you happen to have access to the book we would look forward to anyone volunteering to provide a review.

We are pleased to announce that the proceedings of the “2^nd International Symposium on Underutilised Plant Species: Crops for the Future – Beyond Food Security” has been published by Acta Horticulturae publication of International Society for Horticultural Sciences (ISHS) on 31 March 2013.

The symposium was held on 27 June-01 July 2011 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and was organised by Crops for the Future Research Centre, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus under the auspices of ISHS. The event was co-convened and supported by Crops for the Future, Bioversity International, the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute, Boustead Holdings Berhad, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Kirkhouse Trust, British Council and Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa.

The follow-up to this symposium is the coming “3rd International Conference on Neglected and Underutilized Species (NUS)” that will take place on 23-25 September 2013, in Accra, Ghana. Please visit the official conference website for more information. Interested participants are encouraged to sign up for the conference newsletter to receive updates on the development of this conference.

 

Archived postings of the symposium in the past:

http://www.cropsforthefuture.org/2011/08/crops-for-the-future-symposium-2011-introduction/

http://www.cropsforthefuture.org/2010/09/2nd-international-symposium-on-underutilised-plant-species-2/

Together with a number of international and Spanish partners, CFF co-organised  the “International Seminar Crops for the XXI Century”, held last December in Cordoba, Spain. The seminar resulted in the Cordoba Declaration, which calls for more diversity in agricultural and food systems, principally through greater use of neglected and underutilised species (NUS). Specifically the declaration proposes action along these lines:

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  Farmers threshing quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), near Puno, Peru.

  Improving education and awareness to ensure that the values of a much wider range of NUS are recognized by all society;

• Increasing recognition and support for small scale and family farmers, women and men, in maintaining diversified and resilient agricultural systems;
• Facilitating the conservation, access, availability, use and exchange of seeds by farmers;
• Promoting formal and informal research and plant breeding to realize the full potential of NUS;
• Improving access to markets and stimulating demand for a wider range of NUS, while ensuring that benefits are shared fairly.

In collaboration with UNCTAD, GIZ and other partners, CFF has recently completed this wikibook on biotrade. Biotrade concerns the local, national and international trade in physical goods derived from native biodiversity, including agricultural species. The wikibook covers concepts relevant to biotrade, explores the benefits and risks associated with it, as well as the frameworks and factors enabling it.

What surprised us in putting together the wikibook is the complexity and enormous economic importance of biotrade, which is under-reported because of biotrade’s multi-faceted, dispersed and oftentimes informal nature. Compiled data suggest that global biotrade is a multi-billion US$ industry, probably in the middle double-digits.

Another issue that caught our attention is the growing share of agriculturally produced biotrade materials, in particular from the farming of wild-type species, as described in the wikibook. There is no shortage of standards and guidelines for the sustainable extraction of biotrade materials from natural habitats, but typically the combined effect of relentless market demand, unscrupulous traders and poor gatherers and hunters, depletes the resource base. Thus, many herbal and other plant and animal materials are becoming scarce from the wild and need to be farmed.

We have previously reported on the participation of our colleague Mei Jiun Kwek at the Wikimania 2012 conference – this year’s international gathering of Wikipedians. On this page you can meet a few of the tens of thousands of volunteers who write and edit Wikipedia. CFF is proud to see that a feature of Mei Jiun’s work has been included.

In this video she explains her excitement about the value of contributing images of minor crops to Wikimedia Commons, often the only images covering particular species. However, she also notes that many researchers from other agricultural research organisations “are just not excited to do that because they prefer to develop their own database, they prefer to upload the picture to their own organisations’ websites. They prefer to publish their knowledge in physical books, rather than contribute that idea to Wikipedia. Actually, I believe in the agriculture community or in the researcher community, they are not aware of the potential with working in Wikipedia”.

Clearly, persuading our community to share their information and material in public repositories is still an uphill struggle, but it is one CFF will continue to be engaged in. In early 2013, Mei Jiun will publish a resource page on our website, designed to provide guidance on the use of Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, and Google Books, and most importantly to explain how volunteering content on underutilised species to these repositories benefits contributors. Stay tuned!