Nibbles: Wikipedia, Cheese labels, Chickpea genome, Snake gourd, Phenotyping services, Politics, Sustainability on NUS, Brassica review

Natural History Museum wants a wikipedian. So, in a different way, does Crops for the Future.
The poetry of New York cheese labels.
Another crop genome bites the dust.
Kew contemplates the snake gourd.
Now you can outsource your experiments.
Strange bedfellows: small organic farmers and the Tea Party, a marriage made in Nebraska.
Got research on underutilized species (or indeed sustainable food chains) you think you might like to publish?
The OECD publishes a huge study of the biology of Brassica crops. Yes, the OECD.

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.