Nibbles: Eggplant, Cactus domestication, Berries, Conservation, Drought, Conference, Chaffey, Rice relative, Cornus, Adansonia, Pavlovsk, Genebanks, Dams

How can you do Eggplant’s Rich History and not wonder why this generally huge, generally purple thing is called an eggplant?
Domestication of the Gray Ghost Organ Pipe cactus; exceedingly complex. Oh and there’s a cool photo here.
How berries protect the brain from age-related malfunction. Are you listening, Dmitry?
Protect medicinal plants, says letter-writer.
The world doesn’t understand drought tolerance, says another letter-writer.
Agrobiodiversity in Mesoamerica conference.
Chaffey’s Plant Cuttings from Annals of Botany. Must-read stuff.
A wild relative contributes trait for early morning flowering to rice, allowing it to escape sterility induced by high temperatures.
The Cornelian Cherry and the Baobab explained.
Voice of America devotes Special English report to Pavlovsk. If that ain’t viral, what is?
Genebanks on a roll in China. In Australia, not so much.
Dam dataset online. Let the mashups proliferate.

Big IUCN report says that biodiversity and agriculture are in conflict, they don’t really need to be, but it’s really complicated for them not to be. So that’s us all told.
If only annual crops were perennial, for example, eh?
If only we incorporated more sustainable agriculture in education, for example, eh? Apart from anything else we could still have beer. No word on the role of perennial barley though.
If only improved seeds were open source, for example, eh?
If only we could cryopreserve coral, for example, eh? Wait, what?