Luigi Guarino

Rejoice, NY Times mentions crop wild relatives in article about adapting agriculture to climate change

Ah, but only confusingly, and to downplay their current usefulness:

Wild relatives of crops could be better suited to harsher climes, but efforts to collect and breed such crops are just beginning.

The rest of the article tells you why Africa needs GMOs.

More either-or stuff from the Guardian on the Indian GM brijal story.
The USDA prickly pear cactus germplasm collection gets some exposure. And how many times can one say that.
Much better title from Discover on that ancient northern Amazonian earthworks story.
Kenyan foresters tell people to eat bamboo. Luigi’s mother-in-law politely demurs. On the other hand, she might like this.
Swiflet farming? Swiflet farming.
Really heated exchange on paper on coconut lethal yellowing in Yucatan develops on Google Groups. I love the internet.
PROTA publishes expensive book on promising African plants. Promises, promises. NASA promised us the personal jetpack. Where are we with that?
Nice summary of that Mesoamerican agricultural origins story we blogged briefly about a few days ago. So what exactly do you call hunter-gatherers who also grow crops?
First International Symposium on Wild Relatives of Subtropical and Temperate Fruit and Nut Crops will be held March 19-23, 2011 in Davis, California on the campus of the University of California, Davis. Book early.

Crop Science is publishing papers from the CGIAR Science Forum 2009. Lots of interesting stuff, including on biofortification and diet diversification, perennial favourites here of course. And all open access! Thanks, Jeff.

The Field Museum joined Flickr Commons in April 2009, inviting the public to help describe a selection of our historic photographs.

And that includes some incredible photos from botanist J. Francis MacBride’s expeditions to Peru in 1922 and 1923. Like this one, for example.

There’s some agrobiodiversity in there. If you can help out with describing any of the photos, leave a comment on its Flickr page.