Posted 2:12 PM by Tevita
PNG to implement ‘HORTIVAR’ database/Taun - a potential export earner for PNG

Papua New Guinea will now join 83 other countries in implementing a performance database for cultivars of horticultural crops. The online database, known as HORTIVAR, was developed and launched recently by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). Research and development organisations dealing with fruits, vegetables, roots and tubers, ornamentals, mushrooms, herbs and condiments will be invited to participate in entering datasets of various horticultural crops into the database.

The National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) will be the host institution in PNG to facilitate this exercise, which begins with a series of training workshops for participating organisations starting in February 2008.

During an awareness seminar at the NARI Head Office in Lae on January 22, 2008, Project Coordinator Mark Tinah said HORTIVAR is a database or information system on performances of horticulture cultivars in relation to environmental conditions and crop cultivation practices.

Mr Tinah said: “This resource is a tool for knowledge management, which serves as a standard methodology for data collection and record keeping,” adding that it is also a powerful search engine for easy retrieval and comparison of information, a standard template for educational purposes, and a gateway to horticulture knowledge.

Participants at the seminar were also told that HORTIVAR has been conceived to serve as a tool for safeguarding information on the field performances of horticulture cultivars in relation to, among other things, their resistance to pests and diseases, market requirements and consumer preferences.

Many National Horticulture Research Stations all over the world have carried out a large number of field trials to assess the performance of horticulture cultivars in different agro-climatic environments and applying different cultivation practices. This wealth of information is however not easily accessible because it is stored in different libraries. Furthermore the methodology applied for data recording varies from country to country and sometimes even within the country from one institution to another.

In a bid to store and easily retrieve information data published in technical documents or recorded in field experiments, FAO established the database as part of the World Agriculture Information Centre (WAICENT).

Data registered in the database are “site specific” and therefore the database is geo-referenced and in future can serve for Geographical Information System applications.

Mr Tinah said the training workshops will be conducted throughout PNG covering all agro-regions. Scientists from NARI and other line departments in the agriculture sector will be invited to participate and contribute information on studies or field observations on horticultural crops. The first workshop will be conducted in Lae next month.

At present this wealth of information database is accessible through the internet on website: http: www.fao.org/hortivar

Taun - a potential export earner for PNG

A Papua New Guinea indigenous tree fruit, locally named “taun” or “ton”, has the potential to become a lucrative export earner for the country if it is domesticated and commercialised. Research is currently underway at the Lowlands Agricultural Experiment Station of the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) at Keravat to successfully clone and propagate short, early-bearing and high-quality fruit-yielding trees to serve this purpose.

Taun, scientifically known as Pometia pinnata, is a large tree up to 45m tall. It grows naturally in forests throughout the PNG lowlands. While the hard timber is widely used for buildings and as firewood, its fruit is a good source of food. With over eight different varieties, PNG has by far the highest diversity of taun in the Asia-Pacific region which, if cultivated and processed, can generate a healthy income as an exported product.

NARI Agronomist Mathew Poienou, who is working with the fruit, said at present taun is only being used in the region as a timber commodity. However Mr Poienou said its fruit is also of value and NARI is currently working on domesticating and commercialising taun as part of the Institute’s drive to develop indigenous PNG nut and fruit trees as alternative export-viable crops.

The tree fruit’s domestication will require the identification and collection of best varieties of which seedlings or cuttings would be used for cloning and desired clones propagated and distributed to farmers. In the last few years, taun fruits have been collected from selected trees and evaluated for quality characterisation such as fruit size, texture and taste.

When presenting his Masters thesis titled “Domestication of Taun in PNG” at the University of Queensland last year, Mr Poienou pointed out that not much was known about the propagation of existing taun species. But NARI has identified grafting and cuttings as two possible methods of propagation.

Research is yet to determine which taun variety or varieties will produce the best clones. Mr Poienou said NARI is the first institution to attempt the propagation of taun, stressing that the results achieved could also be applied to other potential income-generating fruit and nut trees.

Taun grows in lowlands and lower montane forests, and from the coast to 700m above sea level. The tree fruit is commonly found in New Ireland, East New Britain, West New Britain, Manus, North Solomons, East Sepik and other provinces in the lowlands.

Lae Rotary donates vegetable seeds for Oro Province

The Rotary Club of Huon Gulf in Lae supplied vegetable seeds at the value of over K5000 to flood affected rural communities in the disaster strike Oro Province. The National Agricultural Reserach Institute (NARI) purchased the seeds on behalf of the club early this month from Farmsett Ltd in Lae and will now delivery them to the Provincial Department of Agriculture and Livestock in Oro for distribution through its site network.

The seeds were of fast growing and suitable vegetables such as pumpkin, watermelon, cucumber, eggplant, Chinese cabbage, tomato and bean.

President of Rotary Club of Huon Gulf, Graeme Paul, said the club voted to fund for seed purchases after a club member, Dr Workneh Ayalew, reported on the serious need to provide a means of sustenance to the many people who have lost their food gardens and crops. Mr Paul said based on Dr Ayalew’s assessment after visiting the province, the Huon Gulf Club decided to provide the seeds, “which cost the Club many thousands of kina but in the hope that our Rotary fund raising will be able to provide relief and comfort to the people of Oro.” He said the seeds would assist affected communities revive their home gardens and find comfort.

This community service is expected to directly support up to 1000 rural communities who will receive a different combination of varieties of vegetable seeds. These direct beneficiaries would further assist other community members after one harvest season by providing them similar seeds.

Oro Province was hit by Cyclone Guba and subsequent heavy rains in late November, 2007. According to a rapid assessment done by NARI in early December, 2007, damages of food gardens and losses of food crops and livestock species were reported from over 200 villages from almost the entire province. At least 153 people were confirmed dead and another 224 were missing. Damages occurred in the form of flash floods, land slides, massive mud flooding and submersion of gardens and villages under water and mud floods. The main food crops damaged included sweet potato, taro, yam, banana, cassava, vegetables and sago. Other crops such as coconuts, betenut and coffee were also destroyed. Livestock species lost to floods were village chicken and pigs with fish stocks and other marine resources.

Dr Workneh, who is employed by NARI, said planting materials for sweet potato, corn, taro, yam, cassava, rice, pumpkins and local vegetables were urgently needed by many communities. He said communities have also expressed interest for common livestock species like chicken and pig.

NARI delivered some planting materials (taro, cassava, yam, sweet potato, corn) from its Bubia and Laloki stations to Popondetta during the assessment period. The Oil Palm Institute Corporation, Higaturu Oil Palm Pvt Limited and Anglican Church were to propagate these materials.

NARI is also preparing local seeds collected from local communities around Morobe and

Madang, mainly along the main Highway, to be delivered to Oro. These are seeds of pimpkin, cucumber and corn.



‘RITA technology’ to speed up crop improvement

Papua New Guinea’s crop improvement initiatives through biotechnology move a step forward with capacity building in the use of a new methodology for crop propagation – RITA technology. This follows a two months training of biotech specialists, Rati Irikati of Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC) and Robert Plak of National Agricultural Reserach Institute (NARI) in Montpellier, France, from September to November 2007. Both participants work at the Aiyura Tissue Culture Laboratory, which is jointly operated by their employers.

The training was focused on the use of the RITA technology and mass propagation of crop plants with main emphasis on somatic embryogenesis of coffee and microtuber production of potato. It was made possible through funding support from the European Union, the France Government, CIC and NARI.

Mr Plak said they had hands-on-training on the use of the RITA technology and learnt the best practices in media preparation, culture initiation, mass propagation using RITA and transfer to screen house. The following areas were covered during the training.

· Preparation of stock solution

· Explant selection, surface sterilisation and initiation

· Culture media preparation

· Culturing and transfer (induction, expression, cell suspension, regeneration in Rita)

· Acclimatisation

· Installation of RITA, fitting its parts and use



RITA stands for Rècipient à Immersion Temporaire Automatique in French, which means Receiver of Temporary Automatic Immersion System.

CIC Experimentalist, Mr Irikai, who is attached with CIC’s Research & Grower Services Division at Aiyura said the rita technique is useful to PNG’s coffee industry.

The technology is appropriate for utilising hybrid coffee with superior qualities that can be multiplied, especially for Arabica and Robusta species for the Highlands and Lowlands respectively. It is expected that results of RITA will have direct impacts on smallholder coffee farmers by making available elite planting materials or selections in a timely manner with improved quality and production. These plants will be disease free at establishment.

Mr Plak, who is also the Tissue Culture Lab Manager said for tree crops like coffee and other fruits and nuts which are considered difficult to mass propagate using other means of plant tissue culture techniques, somatic embryogenesis would be the way to go provided somaclonal variations and other genetic aberrations are kept to a minimum, mainly in large scale production systems.

Rita technology provides added benefits, including less contamination, reduced labour and less costly, improved nutrition and reduction of tissue verification to name a few.

CIC: Coffee has been a difficult crop to micropropagate using the meristem culture technique. Now with somatic embryogenesis using the Rita technology, it can be mass propagated in huge numbers, though it will take at least a year to start getting into the production of plantlets and continue thereafter.

NARI: Rita technology will assist is mass propagation of crops as well as advanced research in plant tissue culture studies. Other fruit and nut trees that are considered hard to micropropagate can be mass propagated using Rita by way of somatic embryogenesis. This provides a good avenue for doing large-scale research with trees of similar age a

Posted 11:42 AM by Tevita
CGIAR Centers Send Seeds to Svalvard Vault

From : CGIAR

More than 200,000 crop varieties from Asia, Africa and Latin America, drawn from collections maintained by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), will be sent to the Svalvard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) in Norway. SGSV is a facility constructed on a mountain deep in the Arctic permafrost capable of preserving the vitality of samples for thousands of years. Svalvard will be the depository of seeds of different food crops and agroforestry plants from all over the world. It is intended to ensure that seeds will be available for securing food supplies should a manmade or natural disaster threatens genebanks or agricultural systems.
"The CGIAR collections are the 'crown jewels' of international agriculture," said Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which will cover the costs of preparing, packaging and transporting CGIAR seeds to the Arctic. "They include the world's largest and most diverse collections of rice, wheat, maize and beans. Many traditional landraces of these crops would have been lost had they not been collected and stored in the genebanks."
The first installment will contain collection duplicates from research institutions like the International Potato Center (CIP), International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), among other CG centers.

Posted 11:12 AM by Tevita
Eating As If the Climate Mattered
By Bruce Friedrich, AlterNet
Posted on January 23, 2008, Printed on January 24, 2008

Last week in our nation's capital, the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) held a climate change conference focused on solutions to the problem of human-induced climate change. And in Paris the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is sharing the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, held a press conference to discuss to discuss "the importance of lifestyle choices" in combating global warming.
Notably, all food at the NCSE conference was vegan, and there were table-top brochures with quotes from the U.N. report on the meat industry, discussed more below. And the IPCC head, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri declared, as the AFP sums it up, "Don't eat meat, ride a bike, and be a frugal shopper."
The New York Times, also, seems to be jumping on the anti-consumption bandwagon. First they ran an editorial on New Year's Day stating that global warming is "the overriding environmental issue of these times" and that Americans are "going to have to change [our] lifestyles..." The next day, they ran a superb opinion piece by Professor Jared Diamond about the fact that those of us in the developed world consume 32 times as many resources as people in the developing world and 11 times as much as China.
Diamond ends optimistically, stating that "whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable."
It is reasonable for all of us to review our lives and to ask where we can cut down on our consumption-because it's necessary, and because living according to our values is what people of integrity do.
Last November, United Nations environmental researchers released a report that everyone who cares about the environment should review. Called "Livestock's Long Shadow," this 408-page thoroughly researched scientific report indicts the consumption of chickens, pigs, and other meats, concluding that the meat industry is "one of the ... most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global" and that eating meat contributes to "problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity."
The environmental problems of meat fill books, but the intuitive argument can be put more succinctly into two points:
A 135-pound woman will burn off at least 1,200 calories a day even if she never gets out of bed. She uses most of what she consumes simply to power her body. Similarly, it requires exponentially more resources to eat chickens, pigs, and other animals, because most of what we feed to them is required to keep them alive, and much of the rest is turned into bones and other bits we don't eat; only a fraction of those crops is turned into meat. So you have to grow all the crops required to raise the animals to eat the animals, which is vastly wasteful relative to eating the crops directly.
It also requires many extra stages of polluting and energy-intensive production to get chicken, pork, and other meats to the table, including feed mills, factory farms, and slaughterhouses, all of which are not used in the production of vegetarian foods. And then there are the additional stages of gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing transportation of moving crops, feed, animals, and meat-relative to simply growing the crops and processing them into vegetarian foods.
So when the U.N. added it all up, what they found is that eating chickens, pigs, and other animals contributes to "problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity," and that meat-eating is "one of the ... most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global."
And on the issue of global warming, the issue the New York Times deems critical enough to demand that we "change [our] lifestyles" and for which Al Gore and the IPCC received the Nobel peace prize, the United Nations' scientists conclude that eating animals causes 40 percent more global warming than all planes, cars, trucks, and other forms of transport combined, which is why the Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook says that "refusing meat" is "the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint" [emphasis in original].
There is a lot of important attention paid to population, and that's a critical issue too, but if we're consuming 11 times as much as people in China and 32 times as much as people in the third world, then it's not just about population; it's also about consumption.
NCSE, IPPC, and the U.N. deserve accolades for calling on people to stop supporting the inefficient, fossil fuel intensive, and polluting meat industry. The head of the IPCC, who received the Nobel Prize with Mr. Gore and who held last week's press conference in Paris, puts his money where his mouth is: He's a vegetarian.
The NCSE's all-vegan 3,000-person conference last week, also, sends positive signal that other environmentalists would be wise to listen to. Thus far, among the large environmental organizations only Greenpeace ensures that all official functions are vegetarian. Other environmental groups should follow suit.
It's empowering really, when you think about it: By choosing vegetarian foods, we're making compassionate choices that are good for our bodies, and we're living our environmental values at every meal.
Find out more at www.GoVeg.com/eco, and find recipe tips, meal plans, and more at www.VegCooking.com.
Bruce Friedrich is vice president for campaigns at PETA. He has been a progressive activist for more than 20 years.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/74605

Posted 10:57 AM by Tevita
Agricultural rehabilitation needed in Oro disaster zone / World Bank targets agricultural development in PNG

From : Didinet

Oro Province needs a speedy rehabilitation of agricultural activities to recover food gardens and livestock species for rural communities affected by Cyclone Guba and subsequent heavy rains in late November. A report by the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) indicated that there was significant loss of sources of planting materials of food crops in areas where damages have been extensive and villages abandoned. And the need to put in place medium and long term rehabilitation programmes was eminent and NARI was keen to participate with its expertise.

The report stems from a rapid assessment requested by the National Disaster Centre which was to verify the level of damage caused to smallholder agriculture and needs for rehabilitation. A team of NARI scientists, led by Dr Workneh Ayalew, conducted this survey from December 3-5. According to the report, deaths, damages and losses were reported from over 200 villages from almost all LLGs of the province. At least 153 people were confirmed dead and another 224 were missing. Damages occurred in the form of flash floods, land slides, massive mud flooding and submersion of gardens and villages under water and mud floods.

The main food crops damaged included sweet potato, taro, yam, banana, cassava, vegetables and sago. Other crops such as coconuts, betenut and coffee were also destroyed. Livestock species lost to floods were village chicken and pigs with fish stocks and other marine resources.

Dr Workneh said planting materials for sweet potato, corn, taro, yam, cassava, rice, pumpkins and local vegetables were urgently needed by many communities. He said communities have also expressed interest for common livestock species like chicken and pig.

NARI has also delivered some planting materials (taro, cassava, yam, sweet potato, corn) from its Bubia and Laloki stations. The Oil Palm Institute Corporation, Higaturu Oil Palm Pvt Limited and Anglican Church have initiated propagation of these materials.

Dr Workneh said provided sufficient funding is available, NARI can provide technical supervision and training on both short-term and longer-term rehabilitation activities. He also said the Institute has the expertise to support agricultural rehabilitation effort in the areas of natural resource management (e.g. soils, water, genetic resources), customised training in improved agricultural practices and impact assessment. He added that with collaboration and networking with authorities and the community, NARI can provide the essential planting materials and technical guidance for the revival of food gardens in affected areas.

World Bank targets agricultural development in PNG

World Bank is making another move to support agricultural development in Papua New Guinea in a big way. This time more focus is on building partnerships between public and private sector institutions and organisations in the country which are directly involved in agriculture.

A group of representatives from World Bank and its subsidiary, International Finance Corporation, who visited the National Agricultural Research Institution (NARI) near Lae revealed this on December 7. The visit was part of a national consultation World Bank conducted with key research institutions, government departments, commodity boards, exporters and representatives from the private sector. This was to identify potentials and challenges confronted by the sector and to see where and how the Bank can support with appropriate programmes.
Sydney based representative Marianne Grosclaude said: “Our focus is we would like to see how the public sector could better support the private sector investments in agriculture.”
Ms Grosclaude, who is the World Bank Country Sector Coordinator for Rural Development (Pacific), said their interest in NARI was to see what the Institute sees as main potentials and challenges in agricultural development and how it can contribute to building partnerships with the public and the private sector.
“We would like to know what NARI’s role could be, if we are talking about facilitating and strengthening these kinds of partnerships where you have private sector investing in one area and public sector coming up with complementary investments in research”.

In a preview, NARI Director General Dr Raghunath Ghodake stressed the importance of investment in PNG with the scope and importance of science, research and technology in PNG agricultural development, and potentials and challenges. Also presented were disaster preparedness strategies on climate change and El Nino by NARI scientist Dr John Barley.
Ms Grosclaude said information collected would also assist them to use these partnerships in making sure that results of research are best disseminated in PNG.

Other organisations visited included the Department of Agriculture and Livestock, Rural Industries Council, Spice Board, Cocoa Board, PNG Growers Association, Coffee Industry Corporation, Coffee Exporters, Fresh Produce Development Agency, Cocoa Exporters and the private sector.

Posted 1:38 PM by Tevita
Pacific Biodiversity News

From : Pacifc Biodiversity Information Forum

Conference Success in Alotau!

Posted 3:22 PM by Tevita
New labels balance nutrition pros and cons, give each food a score

From : San Francisco Chronicle

Posted 3:00 PM by Tevita
Book Review: SOLOMON ISLANDS --A SOUTH SEAS JOURNEY

From : Island Business

Posted 1:52 PM by Tevita
Pacific People Hard Hit by Climate Change

From : UNDP