Archaeology

Nibbles: UK collections, Rice domestication, Cattle domestication, Truffles, Yam chromosomes, Shiitake, Videos galore, Coffee and climate change

Search the UK’s living plant collections for errant edibles and their wild relatives.
Independent origins for aromatic rice varieties?
I’ll see your rice varieties, and raise you independent cattle domestication in China.
The scent of a truffle, love it or leave it.
Improving the yam, with flow cytometry and satellite markers to discover how many chromosome sets they have.
Going back to nature for the best in cultivated shiitake. With video goodness.
The @gricultural Revolution, from CTA. Too cute, too loud, too long. With even more video goodness.
“Local Farmer Grows Beans from the Basque Region.” I guess he’s not local to the Basque region, then, or it wouldn’t be remarkable. Yet more video goodness. Aside: I’ve grown alubias de Tolosa and they are wonderful, but I never was elected a member of the confraternity.
You want even more video goodness? Here’s some on resilience in coffee farming.

Yet another blog post about heirloom apples. Why not heirloom, I don’t know, grains?
Yet another genebank opens.
On the other hand, can never have too many agrobiodiversity songs.
Banks? someone mention banks? Biodiversity hotspots are like (some) banks. Too big to fail.
Even crop wild relative hotspots?
1491: Amazon.
1493: New England. Hope Charles Mann won’t mind me borrowing his tropes.
Interesting use of technology to deliver interesting presentation on mainstreaming of nutrition in agricultural development. Anyone know how it was done?

Enjoying a mango, lychee or cashew? Thank the Eocene-Oligocene glaciation.
A grand tasting of Korean kimchi, in New York next week. #wishiwerethere.
The “Methuselah date” continues to thrive. How soon before we have a comparative sequence? (We missed an earlier report.)
You know what else is thriving? The Crops For The Future Research Centre, that’s what.
The home state of US winemaking? You’ll never guess.
Fishing myths busted. No, not the one about giving someone a fish vs providing capacity building in a piscatorial framework. Carpe carpam!
Kew builds a pyramid! Of pumpkins, settle down.
A well-aged wine to go with those cucurbits? How about this 6000 year-old Greek number? I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.
Nice enough story of cassava improvement from CIAT, except that it is missing the beginning (the genebank?) and the end (blindness prevented).

Flower gardeners discover what their edibles colleagues have suffered under: new EU rules.
“Hard Times Followed Booms for Europe’s Ancient Farmers” Ya don’t say.
“Diversity in Forage Management.” Yes, even in the US.
Makanaka sticks it to the FAO’s State of Food Insecurity in the World 2013.

An ODAP detective story.
Ancient maize gets a map.
Diversity is the key to sustainable cacao.
New Bioversity DG answers the tough questions.
Be the first on your block with an unusual fruit tree.
How to grow awesome carrot seed.
The hard life of Nigerian wine tappers.
Bringing back buckwheat in Bhutan.
Annals of Botany to do halophytes.
Come down to earth with the realization that most people have never heard of cowpea and cassava. Would they have heard of black-eyed peas and tapioca, though?
Big report on urban malnutrition. Maybe cassava (see above) can help?
The last orange grove in the San Fernando Valley. No word on what the variety might be.
All about molasses.
Indian tree breeding institute, and accompanying genebank, get a write-up.
Yes, I know that I could have done a better job of pointing out the connections among some of these things, but it’s been a long week.