Archaeology

Nibbles: Consortium?, Sheep diversity, Sustainable biofuels, Agroforestry, Almonds, Chicken breeding, Restoration, More tree management, Vegetable gardening, Wheat domestication

IRRI tries to raise $300 million for rice in Asia. Including for that genebank of theirs?
Sheep phylogeographic genetic structure weak, but not completely absent, thank goodness.
Examples of sustainable biofuels. No snickering at the back there.
How to manage tree genetic resources under climate change. By some friends.
Almonds 101.
“…testing the genetic and immunological limits of poultry.” And then eating the results.
Grassland restoration needs to take into account functional diversity. And DNA?
Presentation on community forestry management in Niger. Nice story.
Senegalese vegetable farming project uses terra preta but modern seed. Go figure.
Ancient farmers off the hook for loss of key wheat gene. Plant breeders to blame, apparently.

Better late than never, but tubes kinda dead today.
CNN rounds up food museums.
Extremely cool iPhone app maps NYC’s trees. And yet we still have genebank database hell.
The Maya buried their history in their homes. Now, can the boffins find seeds, do their whole aDNA thing?
French research boss explains What it will take to feed the world.
The history of sisal in Tanzania.

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.

Irish botanists are using fungi that grow on cattle and sheep dung to study the history of farming in the Burren. Interesting enough in its own right, but it also reminded me that coprophagus organisms have been used in another part of the world, to the same end.