Collecting wild foods an “efficient method of subsistence.”
Root crops vs grains
Do we need more vegeculture? Via Tucsonivores.
Poisonous agrobiodiversity
UK’s only public garden of “poisonous” plants opens at Alnwick Castle.
Starch and human diversity
Human diversity and agricultural biodiversity interact. The variation that exists between and within crops and livestock products in nutritional content is to some extent matched by — and indeed there is evidence that in some cases it has driven — genetic variation between and within the human populations that make use of them. We’ve blogged about this with regard to lactose intolerance and predisposition to iron deficiency. Now comes a study 1 linking variation among human populations in the number of copies of the amylase gene with the amount of starch in their diet 2
E-agriculture practitioners meet
It’s E-Agriculture Week in Rome next week. Lots of people coming, lots of stuff going on. I’ll try to be very Web 2.0 about it and do some posting when cool agricultural biodiversity comes up, but also check out the blog of the centerpiece conference.