Luigi Guarino

August 16, 2008August 17, 2008

News from the road

Apologies for the light blogging lately, but both Jeremy and I are on the road and busy with other stuff. When last seen, Jeremy was on vacation in Maine, dealing what will probably be the mortal blow to its lobster population. And I’ve been in and out of meetings all week, but I’ve got a couple of days off now and may have time to catch up on the old feed reader.

This is a good place to do that. I’m visiting the Centro AgronÃ³mico Tropical de InvestigaciÃ³n y EnseÃ±anza (CATIE) in Turrialba, Costa Rica. They have a very pleasantÂ campus in a spectacular areaÂ with a well-developed ecotourism industry:

CATIE has a botanic garden and an active seedbank for forest species. But it also has an interest in agrobiodiversity conservation, with very important field genebanks of cacao, coffee and peach palm, and a crop seed genebank specializing in local vegetables, maize and beans. More later.

August 12, 2008August 13, 2008

Nibbles for the road: Baobab, Breeding, Gardening, Earthworms, Taro, Pollinators, Llama, Trees, Chili peppers

More on how the baobab is coming to Europe.
Review of breeding for nutritionally improved crops.
Book on the origins of British gardening.
Earthworms “modulate the competition between grasses and legumes.”
ACIAR publishes book on taro pests in the Pacific.
UNEP launches global pollinator conservation initiative.
Unusual use for livestock fetuses.
“And she grows more than 100 types of trees…“
“Along the equator, without access to refrigeration, you could be dead pretty quickly unless you can find a way to protect yourself against the microbes you ingest every day.”

August 8, 2008August 8, 2008

Tules to the rescue

The U.S. Geological Survey is growing tules and cattails on about 15 acres on Twitchell Island, about 5.7 square miles of rich but fragile peat soil 30 miles south of Sacramento.

Not particularly inspiring at first glance, but then I googled “tule,” a word I hand’t come across before. I figured cattails would be some kind of Thypha. Tules turn out to be types of sedges, although some people seem to use the words interchangeably, or indeed together. Anyway, tules have an interesting ethnobotany in the American Southwest, along with other geophytes.

August 8, 2008August 8, 2008

Rice ups and downs

The agricultural industry can seem pretty strange at times. Take rice, for example. There were two very contrasting stories on this crop in the news today. On the one hand, it is making a comeback in Romania, fueled by cheap land, labour and water. But on the other, acreage is plummeting in Korea. That’s due to changes in local consumption patterns and the move towards cash crops like ginseng. Given high world prices, one would have thought that Asian entrepreneurs would be jumping at the chance to supply the European market. But of course, some Asian countries have put in place export bans.

August 8, 2008August 8, 2008

Nibbles: Dog genetics, ITPGRFA, Mapping, Neolithic, Insects, Markers, Soybeans, Milk

Man’s best friend helps out again.
Intellectual Property Watch looks at the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. And they found that it was good. Well, kinda.
More on predicting the results of climate change on species distributions.
A nice summary of what agriculture has meant for human genetics. I vote we go back to hunting and gathering.
New insectarium allows you to eat exhibits. Pass the mopane worms.
New DNA chip picks out best cows. Daisy unavailable for comment.
The world’s greatest soybean farmer speaks. Did they serve tofu snacks?
Had milk?