When we talk about biodiversity — including agrobiodiversity — we really mean three things at the same time: diversity among ecosystems, among species, and within species. Scientists usually study these scales separately, but can diversity at one level somehow affect diversity at another? That’s the question tackled by an experiment described last week in Science 1 and discussed by one of the authors in Scitizen (fortunately, because the full paper is behind a paywall). 2
Giant swamp taro analyzed
More of one of our favourite leitmotifs. Lois Englberger tells me her team’s latest paper on variety-level nutritional composition has been accepted by the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis 3. It won’t actually be out for a few months, but here’s the abstract to whet your appetite:
Are farmers a dying breed?
I didn’t go looking for this. These three stories came to me independently, from different sources, from different parts of the world, but all within a day or two of each other. And all describing agriculture in crisis.
NTFP and poverty
Collecting wild foods an “efficient method of subsistence.”
Root crops vs grains
Do we need more vegeculture? Via Tucsonivores.