The International Crops Research for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and several partners, including China’s BGI-Shenzhen, have mapped the genome of the pigeonpea. The pigeonpea, or toor dāl in India, is an important food for millions of small farmers in semi-arid regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Often dubbed “poor man’s meat,” pigeonpeas are high in protein and amino acids, and flourish in dry, hot regions. The new knowledge of its gene sequence will be used to breed more productive, disease- and drought-resistant varieties of pigeonpea. This video from ICRISAT elaborates on the breakthrough and some of its implications.
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and
other publications.
Danielle worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She is currently traveling across Africa looking at innovations that are working to alleviate hunger and poverty and blogging everyday at Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. She has a regular column with the Mail & Guardian, the Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post and her writing was been featured in newspapers across Africa including the Cape Town Argus, the Zambia Daily Mail, Coast Week (Kenya), and other African publications. She holds an M.S. in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in environmental policy from Monmouth College.
