- The oldest pig in the world is Vietnamese-Canadian.
- Why plant scientists should tweet. And draw.
- Trifecta of apples and other heirloom fruit. Make that four.
- And nuts.
- Making civet crap coffee sustainable.
- Dutch animal genebank moves.
- Will the inmates be fed seaweed? There’s a collection of those, you know?
- More money for to make sweet potato more nutritious.
- Or, you could empower women. Or both.
- Trouble with citrus? No problem, grow peaches.
- World’s coolest garden.
- And why we need even the less cool ones.
- Testing present plants in future climates.
- Who’s who in edible insects.
- Big Food suddenly realizes it has a climate change problem.
Trifecta: This is the National Clonal Germplasm Repository at Davis. The report mentions: “a recent $50 million grant from the European Union that’s sending botanists all over the world to collect germplasm from as many “landraces” as they can…” Anyone know more on this grant?
The clonal collection was originally further up the valley at Chico – under the responsibility of David Fairchild. His book “The World was my Garden: Travels of a Plant Explorer” (Publ. 1938) is good reading – available as an epub download from https://openlibrary.org
The collection emphasises the importance of `plant introduction’ – as the report says: “the basis of California’s $17.2 billion fruit and nut industry” (and for other crops most of the rest of the vast US crop production and export industry).
Why on earth has the term `plant introduction’ dropped out of use? Growing someone else’s quality varieties is a good deal more useful and cheaper than developing your own – and germplasm collecting is (or was) a good life-style choice.