- Sorry about slow blogging lately. Life caught up with us. Slowly getting back in the saddle…
- ISIS benefitting from agricultural production as much as oil.
- Why we should drop “statistically significant.”
- Irish folk medicine being used. Again. Or still.
- Back to the future of farms, medieval edition: it’s the faldage, stupid.
- Botanical art in history.
- Applying zoo methods to plant conservation. Maybe should be the other way too?
- The future of dates is in the US?
- History of the Honeycrisp apple, for all you Red Delicious haters out there.
- Ancient stash found. Down to seeds and stems.
- Keep warm with some nice Latin American drinks.
- Or beer made from old yeast from a shipwreck.
International Agrobiodiversity Congress less than a month away
The 1st International Agrobiodiversity Congress will be taking place in New Delhi, India from November 6-9, 2016. All the usual suspects will be there, and then some. We always say this, and we never (well, rarely) get any takers, but I’ll say it again for completeness, and because the social media arrangements for this particular shindig are unclear from the website: if you’re going to be there, and would like to blog about the proceedings, let us know, and we’ll make it happen.
Brainfood: Genomic data edition
- When more is better: how data sharing would accelerate genomic selection of crop plants. It’s the data sharing, stupid.
- Genomic prediction contributing to a promising global strategy to turbocharge gene banks. See what I mean?
- Conservation of Animal Genetic Resources – A New Tact. Yeah, for animals too.
- Indigenous stocks as treasure troves for sustainable livestock production in the 21st century: Insights from small ruminant genomics. See what I mean?
A new dawn in Lebanon, and ICARDA
If you’re one of the lucky few who follow me on social media, you’ll know I was in Lebanon last week for the opening of the new ICARDA genebank. It was great to meet the dedicated team of Lebanese and Syrian staff who are re-establishing the active collection at Terbol in the Bekaa Valley, with material obtained from Svalbard late last year. And it was also great to be back in Lebanon after almost 25 years. Some things are still the same. But many have changed, and there’s hope in that.
Aurochs redux
A paper just out in Open Quaternary discusses “The Draft Genome of Extinct European Aurochs and its Implications for De-Extinction.” Not to boast about it, but we were onto that five years back.
