Nobel Conference Blog

Category: Cary Fowler

  • Nobel: A weeklong gastronomic preview to be offered in the MarketPlace

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    heldke

    The mission: Create seven menu items, each of which somehow evokes the life or work of one of our seven Nobel Speakers. Offer them to diners in the MarketPlace the week before the Nobel Conference. (Check out the day’s menu offering s at the Dining Service website The creative team: Dining Service director Steve Kjellgren…

  • “Push-pull” agriculture in Kenya links to Nobel discussions

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    jdontje

    Some news on the international ag production front. As background on the article, stem borer is obviously a kind of pest we are familiar with, but the Striga pest mentioned in the article is a parasitic weed with varied species that use their roots to steal nutrients from corn, sorghum, millet, and cowpeas (aka black-eyed…

  • Optimistic news on the Russian seed bank?

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    heldke

    Following a surprise inspection at the the Pavlovsk station (the Russian  seed bank being threatened with destruction to make way for a housing complex), the auction has reportedly been “postponed for an uncertain period.” Read more here about the August 31 happenings.

  • Russian seed bank “one step closer to destruction”

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    heldke

    A Russian court refused to interfere with a Russian housing agency’s plans to develop new housing units on the site of a seed bank containing more than five thousand varieties of fruits and ornamental plants. Cary Fowler is quoted in an article in The Guardian as saying “It is a bitter irony that the single…

  • Nourishing the Planet interview with Cary Fowler

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    heldke

    Cary Fowler is a member of the “Nourishing the Planet Advisory Group,” a subgroup of the Worldwatch Institute. In this interview with him in the Nourishing the Planet blog, he discusses the significance of crop diversity, the role of the seed bank in safeguarding diversity, and some of the things that individuals might do to…

  • Why crop diversity matters

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    heldke

    Here’s an interesting piece, called “Why the UK Should Pay More Attention to Its Food,” which discusses the reasons that diversity in our plant species matters. Read into it and you’ll find a discussion of Cary Fowler and the Global Seed Bank project. ““It would cost $30million to conserve wheat, one of the world’s most…

  • Biodiversity and Food Security

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    heldke

    At a Capitol Hill briefing on June 16 sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “Paul Gepts, a geneticist and professor of agronomy at the University of California, Davis, warned that inadequate crop biodiversity in the United States could hamstring American farmers as climate change intensifies.” This topic will be sure to…

  • Cary Fowler protests “the largest intentional, preventable loss of crop diversity in my lifetime”

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    heldke

    Construction on a new housing development in Russia jeopardizes the world’s largest collection of fruits and berries, according to an article in The Independent that quotes Cary Fowler.