Category: Travels for Crop Trust

13 December 2019

ASKING THE WOMEN

A few decades ago, crop breeders would develop new varieties which they thought farmers wanted and then expect farmers to plant those improved seeds. That didn’t work so well because farmers and breeders don’t always think alike. Nowadays good breeders get farmers involved early on in the process of developing new varieties and ask their […]
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1 May 2019

A MOROCCAN ROADTRIP

MOROCCO ROADTRIP DAY 1. WELCOME TO MY WORLD It was a coincidence and a stroke of luck that my work travels in Morocco converged with the travels of Padma, Jenni and Russ. So they were able to meet my work colleagues and we were able to spend a night in Marrakech before the three of […]
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10 June 2018

A LIONESS ALL FOR MYSELF

It’s Sunday and I’m not working on finger millet so I took the morning off to visit the Nairobi National Park. This is almost an urban park as it is a mere 15 minutes south of Nairobi with its skyline visible from the park … and yet it truly is the home to some very […]
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7 June 2018

A TALE OF TWO MARYS

Once upon a time a man married two Marys, which is something you can do in Kenya. The man passed away but his two wives, the Marys, lived on and prospered while growing finger millet. Finger millet is a traditional crop of Eastern Africa and once grew abundantly in the Western Kenya near the town […]
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16 May 2018

BAALBEK, THE CITY OF THE SUN

While on assignment in Lebanon, I took an afternoon off to vist the ruins of Baalbek, located in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. They are among the world’s most impressive and best-preserved Roman archaeological sites. Once known as Heliopolis, or the “City of the Sun,” Baalbek was a major religious center dedicated to Jupiter, Venus, and Bacchus. […]
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16 May 2018

BACK AT ICARDA

It’s taken me 25 years, but I’ve finally returned to the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, the organisation I once worked for. This time it wasn’t in Syria but the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon … but Syria was just a few kilometres away beyond the mountains in this photo. The location […]
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11 December 2017

MARUTI THE PIGEONPEA SAVIOUR

In the early 1980s, the Indian state of Karnataka was suffering. Its principle commercial crop, pigeonpea, was being devastated by wilt. Researchers discovered some pigeonpea seeds in the genebank of the International Crops Research Center for Semi-Arid Tropics which were resistant to wilt. The seeds were directly released from the genebank to pigeonpea specialists in […]
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