- World’s oldest basil pollen “may be ‘medicine’”.
- Bioversity digitises the past and contributes to the future: The rise of Africa’s super vegetables.
- New network for sustainable intensification.
- Amaze your friends with you up-to-date knoweldge of the current state of grass genomics.
- Biochar is once again “the next big thing”.
Brainfood: Eastern promise, Biodiversity databases, Pulse carotenoids, Castor oil breeding, Maya beans, NUS and water, Chinese Vitis
- An ethnobotanical perspective on traditional fermented plant foods and beverages in Eastern Europe. 116 taxa, with a preponderance of Rosaceae.
- Estimating species diversity and distribution in the era of Big Data: to what extent can we trust public databases? Trust, but verify.
- Genetic diversity of nutritionally important carotenoids in 94 pea and 121 chickpea accessions. There’s carotenoid diversity in the Canadian collections.
- Role of conventional and biotechnological approaches in genetic improvement of castor (Ricinus communis L.). We have the technology. What we don’t have is results.
- Phaseolus from Cerén—A Late Classic Maya Site. The wilds were also eaten.
- The Potential Role of Neglected and Underutilised Crop Species as Future Crops under Water Scarce Conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some neglected species may be somewhat adapted to low water conditions, perhaps.
- The wild relatives of grape in China: Diversity, conservation gaps and impact of climate change. 15 of 39 species need help, especially as the range of many is expected to be reduced by climate change.
Nibbles: Lovely bunch of coconuts, Svalbard backlash backlash, ADAPTS, British food history, Artisanal backlash, NASA maps soils, Rock bee art
- Kinda random SciDevNet piece about threats to coconut germplasm collections in Asia which doesn’t even mention Bogia. Star of the piece is the Philippines collection, which nobody suggests is threatened.
- Speaking of threatened collections, Mike Jackson rounds up comments on the recent Guardian piece on Svalbard.
- Native Seed/SEARCH gets a new interface.
- How the war changed British agriculture. Fish and chips has always been there though, right?
- The farm-to-table backlash begins. And more along the same lines: “eating natural and artisanal is ahistorical.”
- Mapping soil moisture from space.
- Rocking African bee art.
Nibbles: Regreening, Dog & chicken domestication, Genebanks, Banana hybrids, Orange maize, IFPRI
Nibbles: Beer from fog, Ecoagriculture, Slow oil, Greek diet, Livestock history, Biofortified millet, Zambian crops, Wild tomatoes, Trees & drought, Global genebanks, Saving coconuts, Industrial crops
- Fogcatcher ale? Oh I think so!
- Greenpeace guides donors on ecological farming. Booklet on the preservation of historical monuments to follow.
- Slow Food launches olive oil presidium. Presidium?
- The ancient Greeks had wine for breakfast. Explains a lot.
- Livestock size changes through the ages.
- The sainted Lawrence Haddad on that biofortified pearl millet story from yesterday. Remember that variety can be traced back to a genebank. But not only millet.
- Zambians told to look to their neglected traditional crops. By their government. Which is surely complicit in their neglect. Maybe biofortify them first?
- Collecting tomato wild relatives.
- July drought stops pine trees growing in the SW US.
- Building a global genebank system. And again.
- Saving the PNG coconut collection from Bogia disease. We need a Svalbard for coconuts is what we need.
- Industrial crops and food security in sub-Saharan Africa: mainly complementary, but…