Nibbles: Mainstream MAS, ICRISAT breeding, History of hunger, Specialty crops, Biofortification, Collectivizing smallholders, Fake seeds, Good seeds, Maize diversity, Making palm oil, Space ag, Cacao and CC, Cassava and CC, Cherry phenology, CC adaptation, Flavour gene, Indian apples, GBIF data, EU force feeding petition, BRITE, Sir Hans Sloane, Silk Road, Banana realism

Round-up of stuff that’s been accumulating over past few days because we were busy putting food on the table.
Marker assisted selection of tomatoes makes it to Washington Post. When will African crops do the same?
“The history of humanity is a history of hunger.” Maybe MAS of African crops will help.
USDA money for minor crops. Including African crops?
Nigerian minister of agriculture on biofortification. Of African crops.
African smallholders need to get together. They have nothing to lose but their chains. And their fake seeds. Which is not a problem for their Central American brethren.
Someone mention Central America? Listen to a talk on maize diversity therein. And at the other end of the region’s diversity spectrum: oil palm.
NASA wants to grown stuff in space. Organically, of course. African smallholders nonplussed.
In space, nobody can hear you riot over food prices.
Saving cacao from climate change: The colloquium. We’ve had cassava. Cherries next?
Hold everything: there’s a framework for this business of crop diversity and climate change.
Deconstructing strawberry flavour. Apples next? Not sure Indian farmers will care much.
GBIF wants you to tell them how your data should be licensed. And some background.
You can lobby the EU on fois gras. If that’s your thing.
If you’re in Vancouver on May 6, you can celebrate five years of the Biodiversity Research: Integrative Training and Education (BRITE) Internship Program.
You can also intern at Globefish, which links global fish-trade information networks comprising 85 countries.
Great Great Lives podcast on Sir Hans Sloane, whose connections with agricultural biodiversity are multiple.
Something else whose connections with agrobiodiversity are many, though this could have been highlighted more in the article in question: the Silk Road.
What’s the late Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s connection to crop diversity?

Fresh Nibbles

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.

Published on November 7, 2024

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