- Japan’s unemployed end up farming.
- Somewhat uninformed comments about the perfection of the banana.
- “…traditional genetic crosses outperform genetically modified crops by a wide margin.”
- Alice Waters takedown.
- Brits throw money at bees.
- Red squirrel missing link found through DNA fingerprinting. Red squirrel pie, anyone? Ok ok, make it grey.
- Mexican mangroves in trouble.
- “Indigenous Peoples have contributed the least to the global problem of climate change but will almost certainly bear the greatest brunt of its impact.”
- Go go goji.
- Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers and former Icelandic Prime Minister waxes lyrical about genebanks.
- So there’s a Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. No, not Golden Rice. Via.
- Help the Biodiversity Heritage Library decide on a citation format. Or not. whatever.
Carolina Gold was the rice grown on the rice plantations. it “disappeared” because the plantation soil was not suited to mechanical cultivation.
a rice based cuisine developed on the rice plantations, and the culinary influences that went into it are discussed in an interesting book:
Carolina Rice Kitchen: The African Connection by Karen Hess
“golden” varieties of rice and several other crops are being presented as “improved” with beta-carotene. but the science is not entirely clear.
beta-carotene is an anti-oxidant and a source of Vitamin A; but, researchers have found that beta-carotene is also pro-inflammatory. they raise the question of how its effect on inflammation should be factored in when considring the safety of beta-carotene supplementation.
Yeh et al. Interactions of beta-carotene and flavonoids on the secretion of pro-inflammatory mediators in an in vitro system. Chem Biol Interact (2008) pp. 386-93
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19135038