seed bank Articles
-
Ethiopia’s seed banks and the search for food security
The community seed bank in Chefe Donsa, a village two hours’ drive east of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, collects and preserves the seeds of local crops to ensure farmers have a steady supply of seeds to sow each year. The Chefe Donsa seed bank is just one of 13 established in different climatic areas of the country. The nation’s central seed bank, which the Ethiopian Institute ...
By SciDev.Net
-
The race against time to bank the world’s threatened seeds
Just over an hour’s drive from London, down winding lanes lined with oak and beech trees, lies a concrete and glass building housing scientists tasked with a Herculean mission — to safeguard the future of food. The Kew Millennium Seed Bank is the hub of a global conservation network that aims, by 2020, to store a quarter — or 75,000 — of the world’s plant species, ...
By SciDev.Net
-
The value of seed harboured in Mediterranean temporary ponds
Temporary ponds and their varying water levels provide the conditions for valuable wildlife habitat. A study in Crete, conducted under the LIFE-Nature project1 Actions for the Conservation of Mediterranean Temporary Ponds in Crete, has demonstrated these ponds contain varied collections of seeds and that these ‘seed banks’ could play an important role in vegetation recovery after ...
-
No persistent changes in pasture vegetation or seed bank composition after fallowing
The practice of fallowing pastures during the growing season is intended to increase plant diversity and allow natural reseeding of forage grasses. Fallowing delivers these benefits in New Zealand, but has been adopted on rotationally stocked farms in the northeastern United States with little or no quantitative assessment. Allowing the pasture to remain ungrazed may allow weedy species to ...
-
Soil seed bank composition in pastures of diverse mixtures of temperate forages
Seed banks may contribute useful or weedy species that fill gaps in pastures. In a previous study, pastures planted to complex mixtures of forages had a lesser proportion of weedy species in the aboveground vegetation. In this study, we relate changes in the species composition of the seed bank to changes in the aboveground vegetation. In August 2001, four mixtures [two, three, six, and nine ...
-
Wilderness Center Stream Mitigation- Case Study
ERC was hired by the Akron-Canton Airport to install a meandering stream adjacent to an existing stream. Once we excavated and shaped the new meandering stream the soil from the excavation was used to fill in the existing stream after we tied them together. We installed various in stream structures; rock vanes, step pools, log sills, log vanes, root wads and j-hooks. We seeded and used erosion ...
-
Can grains of the past help us weather storms of the future?
Combining science with traditional knowledge, researchers turn to ancient rice as a source of climate resilience In May 2009, Cyclone Aila wreaked havoc in eastern India. Clocking in at speeds of over 120 kilometers per hour, Aila hit the Sundarbans, the largest continuous block of mangrove forest in the world, located in the Ganga-Brahmaputra tidal delta on the Bay of Bengal. The storm killed ...
By Ensia
-
Guest Post: Using Plant Science Tools to Monitor and Restore a Native Hawaiian Forest
Native Forest Restoration and Monitoring Project Report #4 November 3rd, 2016 by Mihaela Ryer and Michael Ryer October is known as Ikua in the Hawaiian calendar. It's the month when, according to the Hawaiian folklore, dark storms arise, sea roars, thunder roars, birds roar. We haven’t heard any roaring birds, but certainly had our share of dark storms, thunder and roaring seas. October ...
-
Controlling Barnyardgrass with Corn Hybrid Selection
Barnyardgrass is a summer annual grass weed with a global impact on corn production. Yield losses due to barnyardgrass competition have been estimated up to 45% or more for crops such as cotton and corn. Besides corn, it can also be a serious weed pest in rice, soybean, sugarbeet, cotton, and corn. Integrated weed management techniques can be used for control of barnyardgrass in corn. High ...
-
How `open source` seed producers from the U.S. to India are changing global food production
Around the world, plant breeders are resisting what they see as corporate control of the food supply by making seeds available for other breeders to use. Frank Morton has been breeding lettuce since the 1980s. His company offers 114 varieties, among them Outredgeous, which last year became the first plant that NASA astronauts grew and ate in space. For nearly 20 years, Morton’s work was ...
By Ensia
-
Crop gene banks are preserving the future of agriculture. But who’s preserving them?
As climate change makes crop diversity even more important, gene banks struggle to stay afloat. During the past few years of civil war in Syria, rebel fighters have destroyed Shia mosques and Christian graves, and burned and looted Christian churches while the Islamic State group has demolished priceless artifacts in the region. Nothing seemed sacred to the disparate groups vying for control of ...
By Ensia
-
Algae Crop Insurance
Managing Production Risk Through Crop Insurance Facilitator: Devinn Lambert, Bioenergy Technologies Office, DOE kicked off this Session Spotlight on algae farming of the Algae Biomass Summit. Devinn works in the Advanced Algal Systems Program and is Co-Chair on the inter-agency working group on algae. This is one of the driving forces how Devinn and the Algae Biomass Organization have come ...
-
Why a Leading Central Coast Vineyard is Transitioning to Organic Production
The transition to organic wine grape growing can be seen as a high-risk process, and growers often wonder if positive results published by academic researchers will actually translate to their bottom lines once implemented in their vineyards. In order to address the concerns about the perceived gap between research and economic success, telling stories which share the lessons learned by people ...
By UAV-IQ, LLC.
Need help finding the right suppliers? Try XPRT Sourcing. Let the XPRTs do the work for you