Nibbles: Yeast, Weeds, Bioprospecting, Iraq, Pine wilt, Vietnam, GM, GM, Insects, Bees, Sheep, Fowl

Boffins to brew Jurassic Park beer.
Boffins fingerprint weeds.
Boffins scour arctic for antifreeze proteins.
Boffins to reclaim Garden of Eden.
Boffins fight to save pines in Europe.
Boffins improve production of rice and fruits in Mekong Delta.
Boffins to spend $US3.5billion on GM in China.
Boffin “disgraces himself”.
Boffin says insects are agrobiodiversity too.
Boffin wants you to plant sunflowers and count bees. Other boffins dig up evidence of bliblical beekeeping.
Boffins find endogenous retroviruses in sheep different to ones in wild relatives. Via.
Boffins kill beautiful theory about pre-Columbian chickens with ugly fact.

A paean to diverse diets is just what we all need.
And another one, from the MIT Technology Review of all places.
Menawhile, there’s only one reference to dietary diversity in the World Bank’s investment framework for nutrition.
Maybe you have to quantify that diversity before you can save it? Now where have I heard that before?
Meanwhile, Europe reports on biodiversity-friendly farming practices. Does that include the biodiversity of the actual crops? Perhaps surprisingly, yes!
You want biodiversity-friendly farming practices? Talk to Indigenous people. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has launched an e-consultation on “Preserving, strengthening and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and traditional practices for sustainable food systems.”
There’s diversity in asparagus too.
Genebanks can help with those biodiversity-friendly practices, diverse diets and rops and Indigenous practices.
Even big international genebanks.
Even the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
But some are in trouble.
Though others are coming back.