That’s the title of a new two-part documentary on PBS. The associated website has all sorts of interesting stuff, including an interview with a geneticist looking at the relationships among the world’s 400 or so breeds. There’s a podcast.
Controlling self-pollination
Not a day passes, it seems, without news of yet another important gene being identified and mapped. Not long after geneticists uncovered the trigger for flowering, we now have news that researchers at Cornell are close to tracking down the genes that regulate a plant’s ability to self-pollinate. Good news for breeders everywhere.
FRAME
Courtesy of FAO’s Non-Wood Forest Products Digest – well worth subscribing to, by the way – comes news of FRAME’s Natural Products International Workshop, and some new audio presentations that have just become available on its website. I had not heard of FRAME before. It turns out to be a “USAID-funded program to build knowledge-sharing networks of natural resource management professionals and to help NRM practitioners and decision makers to access and use the existing body of knowledge on successful NRM experiences.”
Public awareness of global environmental change
Swedish TV has recently shown a series of four programmes on global environmental change called “The Planet.” There’s an accompanying website, and from the blog Resilience Science now comes news of an English-language version. The aim of the website is to “enhance public awareness and knowledge about the Planet and our future, to show the limits, threats and possibilities we are facing today.” So what? Well, unusually for this kind of thing, there’s actually (some) material on agriculture! The website is in Flash, so I can’t link to the actual bit, but just click on the circle labelled “Earth” and you’ll get there. There’s other interesting stuff too.
Tiger wine
Here’s an interesting way of adding value to an agricultural product: take rice, make rice wine, then soak tiger carcasses in it. Not everyone approves.