Archaeology

Nibbles: Ireland, Plumpy’nut, Saola, Food heritage protection, Millet, Wild veggies, Brassica, UNMDGs, Ukraine

Celebrating the Irish Seed Savers Association celebrations. We had wanted to be there…
CAS-IP on how to “break” the Plumpy’nut patent.
Cattle wild relative seen for first time in 10 years. Well, by scientists anyway.
“Initiatives that merely codify cultural products without taking the social-organizational context into account risk becoming little more than ‘museums of production.'” Ouch.
Millet domestication pushed back in time.
Antioxidant properties of traditional wild Iberian leafy greens. Yes, I know, this medicalizes nutrition, but I thought it was interesting that these wild species are still used.
“…a trait of the diploid species, which apparently looks undesirable, might in fact be highly valuable for the improvement of amphidiploids…”
“Food? We don’t need no stinkin’ food,” say UN negotiators.
UK ambassador’s observations on agriculture in Ukraine. Love the contrast between 100 ha fields of sunflowers and the table groaning under home-grown fruit and vegetables.
In other news, the UK’s ambassador to Ukraine has a blog. And so do a number of others. Sorely tempted to subscribe to their RSS.

Maize boffins move on to RNA. Hard row to hoe.
The coolness of hybrids. No, not the cars. Includes crop wild relatives.
Bioversity makes the case that cacao is charismatic. Hard row to hoe.
IITA tries to crowdsource banana production data. Hard row to hoe. BTW, why not include variety information? Well, maybe they will.
Jatropha rebooted?
The history of barley water. Surprisingly weird.
Cory Bradshaw’s presentation on the global erosion of ecosystem services. A quick look reveals little on that often overlooked service: the provision of diversity for agriculture.
The importance of coca in Andean culture.
Chinese medicinal herbs doing just fine in North Carolina.
FAO hunger report parsed by The Guardian.

Bioversity International and UNEP jointly pile on the pressure to preserve Pavlovsk …
… as do plant professors from University of Wisonsin.
Mexican maize farmers using CIMMYT genebank materials to adapt their varieties. Why not in Africa, then?
High praise for a novel on opium.
Mat Kinase takes Time to task over lacklustre organics article.
King Goodwill Zwelithini calls for One Home One Garden campaign to support food-growing and nutrition.
Feasts predate agriculture. Well, yeah.
Female farmers … a bloke writes.
Great pic on the joys of modern transhumance.
Resurrecting the Maize King. And why not?
More than anyone has a right to know about dogs in the ancient world.

Nancy Turner, great food anthropologist, deconstructs dinner on air.
Breeding for resilience: a strategy for organic and low-input farming systems? Eucarpia conference in Paris in December. Love the ?
Ford Denison on evolution in reverse: crops that become weeds.
Nature on evolution in forward: crop breeders look at roots.
“Shade-coffee farms support native bees that maintain genetic diversity in tropical forests.” Good to know.
Want to know about Access & Benefit Sharing negotiations? We thought so.
Ancient people moved their asses.
Selection during domestication differs from selection during diversification. For the ass too?
Expect to see Dioscorea hispida appear in spam emails very soon.
And today’s answer to malnutrition is a blue-grin alga from Lake Chad. Kidding apart, it’s an interesting story.