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Using local agricultural biodiversity - A Kenyan farmer's story
Peninah Mwangangi has a smallholder farm in the arid region of Kitui, in eastern Kenya. She explains how using local traditional food crops have helped mitigate against harvest loss when the rains don't come. This is the third story in our 'Fork in the Road' series as part of our Rio+20 campaign.
Why understanding forest genetic resources is vital for future options
Laura Snook Programme Leader, Forest Genetic Resources Conservation and Use, talks about the need to harness the huge genetic diversity of different tree species to face challenges such as climate change and find sustainable ways to use and conserve it for our future. This video is the latest from our Rio+20 campaign blog.
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Central & West Asia & North Africa
Collecting caper buds in the Syrian desert is an important source of income for nomadic communities. Photo: A. Giuliani/Bioversity.
Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) includes the ancient land of Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
This is where settled agriculture first began to emerge about 10 000 years ago, as people started the process of clearance and modification of natural vegetation in order to grow newly domesticated plants as crops.
The "Fertile Crescent" is an arc that extends from the eastern part of the Mediterranean to the lower Zagros Mountains in Iraq and Iran. The name is an indication of the rich soils and the plentiful plants that thrive there.
This region has provided the world with food, fibre, oil and other economic plants for thousands of years. Many of the world's most important and popular food crops originated here.
Despite the lack of forested area and the erosion of natural resources there are still 23,000 plant species in the region, of which 7,100 are endemic.
Administration AreaCROP WILD RELATIVES | EURISCO | THE AGROBIODIVERSITY GRAPEVINE | PROMUSA | PLATFORM FOR AGROBIODIVERSITY RESEARCH
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This work by Bioversity International is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. |
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