- “On the contrary, ‘doesn’t come true from seed’ is another way of saying ‘has lots of exciting diversity’.” Rebsie rounds up her tomatoes.
- Domestication of African rice explored at the Vaviblog.
- Entebbe Botanical Gardens has a genebank. That’s all I know.
- Roland continues to dream of a South Sea genebank paradise; one island, one coconut variety.
- “Cary Fowler explains the vital importance of crop wild relatives to address the future challenges to agriculture,” it says at the Trust website.
- Let them eat bread. Foreign Affairs on food riots. h/t Rachel, who has some interesting things to say on the subject.
- Fascinating behind the scenes insights into Economic Botany collections at Kew and elsewhere.
Nibbles: ABS in ITPGRFA, Wheat Yield Consortium, Plasticity and climate change, Sustainable intensification, Early agriculture
- Outstanding Issues on ABS under the Multilateral System – a background study paper. Wait, there’s outstanding issues?
- Wheat geeks meet.
- Plastic plants will cope with climate change. Not what you think.
- Nice write-up of the UK Foresight Food and Farming Futures report on Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture in Africa from Farming First.
- First farmers not as productive as last foragers. One wonders why they bothered.
Nibbles: Mapping species, Paddies, Duplicates in genebanks, Chinese mystery millet, Cherimoya, ITPGRFA, AnGR lectures, Bulgur, Heirloom apples
- Biogeographic Information System Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations. Not agrobiodiversity by any stretch but stunning all the same, and a clarion call to our community to sort out Genebank Database Hell, surely.
- Traditional paddies as ecosystems. Great ones, too.
- Title says “seed banks susceptible to sham samples,” text says not really, and maybe it doesn’t matter much anyway. Our take from a few days ago.
- China’s millet useful in Africa. Which millet? Your guess is as good as mine.
- Cherimoya going seedless.
- Annex 1 list of International Treaty on PGRFA to expand? Well, maybe. Whatever, wow.
- Lecture materials on conservation and use of animal genetic resources.
- The ancient fast foods of Greece.
- Conserving heirloom apples. Nice gig if you can get it.
Nibbles: Micronutrients, Population, Opium, Nixtamalization, Chocolate, Seed swap, Dog domestication, Meeting, Biofuel failure, Mesquite
- “Organic management practices appear to result in elevated levels of grain micronutrient concentration.” By no means the whole story.
- Tom too takes The Economist to task.
- Afghanistan’s opium growers. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
- Nixtamalization for the rest of us. More than you could ever want to know. Rye tortillas!
- Chocolate began with leftover beer? Seems unlikely.
- Take the fight to the monster’s lair. Swap seeds in Brussels. h/t Patrick.
- Dogs or dholes? Yeah I didn’t know what they were either.
- There was a workshop on “Seed System and Climate Change” in Bhutan a month ago.
- Big biofuel project in Tanzania bites the dust. And the land they “leased,” what happened to that?
- Ancient grinding holes. Might mesquite be another edible never domesticated?
More on ancient Roman pills
What I missed when I wrote about the 2000-year-old Roman pills a couple of days back is that the research was highlighted by Discover magazine as one of the Top 100 Stories of 2010. In addition, Emanuela Appetiti, one of the researchers involved, kindly pointed me to a story at AoLNews which has lots more photos and another one in the Washington Post. She also gave me this nice bit of news:
…I am happy to inform you that Alain Touwaide and myself, along with Rob Fleischer, the geneticist who did the DNA analysis of the ancient medicines, will be in Rome in mid-May 2011 (on the occasion of the “Night of the Museums”) to present at “La Sapienza” University this research. For the first time, we’ll be all there: the three of us and the staff of the Soprintendenza di Firenze, who did the archeaological digging and first analysis. The event in Rome will be on May 14, 2011, at the faculty of Letters.
Looking forward to that. In the meantime, here’s a very recent interview with Alain Touwaide, courtesy of the BBC. Thanks, Emanuela.