- Adam Forbes updates us on his travels in Ethiopia and Peru in search of seeds. Check out his pix too.
- “…sea cucumber populations across the globe, from Asia to the Galapagos, are increasingly in trouble.” Oh dear.
- Satellites help reindeer herders by looking for snow melt. Sounds very cost-effective.
- IFPRI says agriculture will be “dramatically” affected by climate change. Oh dear.
- Keeping bees in cities.
- All you ever wanted to know about taro diseases. With pic goodness! Via.
- Walking London’s markets.
- Navarre: “276 varieties of autochthonous apple tree have been described.”
Musa musings
Plantains are versatile, nutritionally very important in various parts of the world, and often delicious. But they tend to get a bad press, because what’s the point of a banana — well, any fruit, really — that’s not sweet, right? Here’s a case in point: travel editor goes to Dominican Republic and disses national dish. Pass the patacones!
Zoos in trouble
The financial mess is wreaking havoc with the funding of zoos in the US. Conservation of globally important fauna, you say?
When you’re the mayor of Philadelphia or governor of New York or Minnesota House minority leader, and you’re trying to keep libraries open and children insured and state troopers paid, the preservation of, say, South African’s Humboldt penguin can seem a little less pressing.
Entertainment and education?
…the first is a no-brainer for financial paring, and the second has already been pruned through the elimination of after-school programs and cuts to state college budgets, among others. In this way, the multiple purposes of zoos — a trifecta once highly valued — have today made the institutions a target on government balance sheets.
Are botanical gardens in the same boat? And are genebanks next?
Top tomatoes totted up
This is a bit old but still worth noting. Mother Earth News came up last year with America’s Top Twenty Tomatoes. They did it by asking “people like Carolyn Male of Salem, N.Y., who has personally grown and tasted more than 2,000 varieties, and Robbins Hail, who tends 600 tomato varieties each season at Bear Creek Farms in Osceola, Mo.” And no doubt Amy Goldman too. Serious tomato people, in other words. I want to know how many of these Jeremy has grown.
How IR8 was born
Henry M. “Hank” Beachell shared the World Food Prize in 1996 with Gurdev Khush. Both IRRI rice breeders, they were responsible for breeding the first Green Revolution dwarf rice variety, IR8. IRRI’s channel on youtube has just posted an excerpt from a USDA-National Agricultural Library (NAL) video project called Precious Seeds which tells his story. The money quote: “…cooking quality was secondary, milling quality was secondary, the main thing was rice production.”