Nibbles: Quinoa, Millet, Prize, Agroforestry, Herdwick sheep, Plant breeding, Potato breeding book, Taro varieties, Hot chocolate, Spices

Oh no! Super-writer Bittman condemns yet more Bolivian farmers to destitution with yummy quinoa recipes.
Can Geoff Tansey help the poor millet farmers of the Deccan Plateau to avoid that fate?
Maybe he should enter that millet “initative” for The Equator Prize.
We’re deafened by the buzz in advance of the World Congress on Agroforestry.
For example, better nutrition associated with trees in urban environments and rural tree cover.
Today’s genome of passing interest: Herdwick sheep. They’re primitive, y’know.
Realfood.org – a name to strike apparently undeserved fear into the hearts of the cynical – offers an encomium to conventional modern plant breeding.
Which is apparently a lost art, at least as regards potatoes.
But not taro, if latest news from Pacific is to be believed. Ignore the title, BTW.
How they made hot chocolate in the olden days, the really olden days.
Another stunner from the Botanist in the Kitchen: Spices and phylogeny.

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.