Luigi Guarino

January 30, 2009January 31, 2009

Confusion at New Scientist

The New Scientist’s blogger manages to confuse the Svalbard Global Seed Vault with the Millennium Seed Bank. I guess it was inevitable.

LATER: No, it wasn’t me that left that first, rude comment! And I’m offended that you think it might have been.

January 30, 2009

Indigenous Tourism and Biodiversity Website Award

Don’t forget to vote!

January 30, 2009

Call for info

Got any information on the effect of climate change on heritage apples? Barbara Tremain-Howard over at Fruit Forum would like to hear from you.

January 29, 2009

Input subsidies to the rescue

Input Subsidies to Improve Smallholder Maize Productivity in Malawi: Toward an African Green Revolution. Denning G, Kabambe P, Sanchez P, Malik A, Flor R, et al. PLoS Biology Vol. 7, No. 1, e23.

Silver bullet, or propaganda?

January 29, 2009January 30, 2009

Nibbles: China, Coconut, Sheep, Water, Plums, Kew

“These young people can’t farm.”
Let the people tap!
Wolf sighted in Massif Central. France surrenders.
Fascinating discussion of how much water farmers “use”.
“Blueberries have some stiff competition”. From plums.
Millennium Seed Bank hit by credit crunch.

Fresh Nibbles

Ancient farmers didn’t have to wait for the genetic diversity that made domestication possible. They selected from variation already present in wild plants, including the ancestors of rice and maize. Domestication was as much about spotting (or happening upon) useful differences as creating new ones.
English colonists in America called Indigenous dogs “wolves,” revealing as much about colonial perceptions as about the animals themselves. This history of Indigenous dogs shows how unfamiliar animals were classified through peculiarly European ideas about wildness.
Austria is bringing forgotten apple varieties back to life. Saving old varieties in genebanks is one thing: getting people to grow, sell and eat them is another, but it can be done. Or at least tried.
Jordan’s olive-oil heritage centres on traditional varieties such as Nabali and ancient Rumi trees, but most production is consumed locally, leaving exports limited and making provenance, cultivar and harvest date important indicators for buyers. Compare and contrast with Austrian apples.
Small island developing states have distinctive food cultures and ingredients, but face particular challenges in building sustainable and resilient food systems. FAO’s A Taste of SIDS explores the connections between island food, biodiversity and culinary heritage. Nice to see diversity within crops considered, though a few local variety names would have been nice.

Published on October 21, 2026