- Desert seeds go to Svalbard.
- “Two young engineers, Fuad Gasi and Idin Fazlic, are in charge of the bank, which is staffed by volunteers.”
- Seedbombs: recipes and legal niceties.
- Achieving food security sustainably. Report of a PAR/FAO workshop.
- On the other hand, here’s what Australia’s leaders heard about A Food Secure World.
- How much do you really need to know about mandrake?
- Do rich countries produce more per hectare? h/t GOOD
- Pocket guides to chili farming. Might have a wider audience than originally intended.
- Collecting cockles is women’s work, at least in Ecuador.
- Why would anyone want to eat it when they could use cassava for biofuel instead?
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?
Nibbles: Biofuels, Avocado, Seed systems, Himalaya, Umbria
- Corn and ethanol, sitting in a tree … it’s complicated.
- More than anyone — except us — could ever want to know about the avocado. h/t Nicola.
- FAO prescribes seed systems for small farmers. h/t CIAT blog.
- Slides about agricultural biodiversity in the Himalaya; wish I knew what to make of it, if anything.
- Umbria says “COLTIVIAMO LA BIODIVERSITÀ“.
Test question (no prizes): What’s the link between avocados and orchids?
Nibbles: Heiser & Chambers, Quinoa, Books, Grafting eggplants, Vitamin D, Pitaya, Cassava, Beetroot, Worldwatch, BBSRC
- Celebrating Charles Heiser and Bob Chambers.
- Quinoa coming into its own in Bolivia.
- Earthscan and Bioversity International team up for new Issues in Agricultural Biodiversity book series.
- Crop wild relatives not just useful to breeders, eggplant edition.
- Vitamin D 101 in pictures.
- Improving pitaya.
- Cassava production trends in Africa in 28 slides. Twenty slides too many, but it’s always good to have the data.
- Beetroot’s colour deconstructed.
- Worldwatch’s 2011 State of the World was released yesterday. Gives a “compelling look at the global food crisis, with particular emphasis on global innovations that can help solve a worldwide problem.” At $19.95 a pop. But supporting material available. Here comes the commentary.
- The genebank at the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council gets its 15 minutes of fame.
Nibbles: Oranges, Pigs, Roundup, Agave
- The Human Flower Project uses Christmas oranges to teach about diversity and traditional knowledge.
- The New York Times discovered the hairy Hungarian Mangalitsa pig … so it must be real.
- SciDev.net’s highs and lows of 2010.
- “The genetic resources from landraces ignored by the tequila industry may be valuable for both ethanol production and conservation.” Uh-huh. h/t Jacob.