Nibbles: Drying seeds, Saving citrus, Shakespeare’s food, Ganja double, TPP, Aurochs art, Coffee diversity, Biofortification, Training, Breeding booklet

Zeolite finds its genebank niche. Remember when we blogged about it?
The USDA citrus genebank at Riverside gets the podcast treatment.
Shakespeare, because it’s the 400th anniversary of his death: food and animals.
Weed, because weed: taxonomy and breeding. Could literally apply to any other crop on earth.
What will the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) do to farm-saved seeds?
Bring back the aurochs!
Barista Magazine on coffee diversity. In other news, there’s a Barista Magazine.
The chemistry of banana carotenoids.
Master of Arts in Food Studies in San Francisco! What’s not to like.
From plant to crop: The past, present and future of plant breeding. Nice booklet.

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.