- Microbiologist makes Guardians of Microbial Diversity award. Agromicrobes awaited.
- Fabulous giant new superinteresting megablog scheduled to launch today.
NoRSS.Yet? - Who likes which yams (by which they mean Dioscorea) in Madagascar? Kew will have answers.
- Genetic diversity invades the zeitgeist, or something.
- Or would you prefer something a little more down to earth?
- Oldest ploughed fields in Czech lands.
- Crazy mixed up report on this weeks new genebank, in
OmanQatar. “Up to 10,000 genes”? Be still my beating heart. - Ich bin ein coco-de-mer-nut.
- Heat speeds up wheat aging. I know how it feels.
- A “Starbucks Of Tortillas”? Sounds worse than it is.
- Welcome news of fundamental work on a “minor” millet.
- IITA goes to jail.
- Genetically modifying cannabis to make it safe to eat. Such a bad idea. On so many levels.
Nibbles: AnGR genomic resources, Agroforestry fund, US climate map, Cassava rules
- Big new project on farm animal genomics. Gene-jockeys lick lips.
- Big new push to raise money for the Moringa Fund. Agroforesters lick lips.
- Big new hardiness zone map unleashed by USDA on unsuspecting world. American GIS people and gardeners lick lips.
- Bill Gates mentions cassava. CIAT licks lips.
Nibbles: Canis then and now, Training roundup, Soybean genome, Top 10 viruses, PNG drought, Food archaeology, Sturgeon Bay, Moringa
- Dogs were first domesticated animal. But the love affair is cooling off, at least for some breeds.
- Building capacity for animal genetic resources use, and for conservation and sustainable use under the ITPGRFA. And tree domestication. Is someone keeping track?
- BGI continues to take over DNA world.
- And the Worst Plant Virus Oscar goes to…
- How PNG farmers cope with drought. From what is developing into a really useful blog.
- I wish I had time to read 200 pages on ancient Athenian food. But maybe you do?
- Learn about the USDA potato collection, including lots of wild relatives.
- The tree that thinks it’s a supermarket: Moringa in the limelight again.
Nibbles: Rice breeding, West African agriculture, Asian AnGR, Wheat breeding, Chinese semiotics, Neglected plant at NordGen, Fledermaus, PPB
- Norwich boffins save the world. To get the real story, you need to deconstruct the piece using this.
- “Results indicate that the greatest agriculture-led growth opportunities in West Africa reside in staple crops (cereals and roots and tubers) and livestock production.” Minor crops get the shaft again?
- Project tackles conservation of Asian farm animal diversity. I’ve always wondered whether there might be a role for ecotourism. I’d pay to see weird cocks. And hens.
- Pakistani boffins return home with skills to improve wheat P efficiency. And the resources? We shall see.
- Chinese food and plant semiotics. Can’t wait for LanguageLog to get to grips with this.
- NordGen characterizes a weirdly-named exotic Cinderella crop. Can you guess which?
- And can you guess what the “best kept secret of agricultural success” might be? Clue: nothing to do with those East Anglian boffins of the first item.
- Participatory plant breeding and gender analysis. They’re not giving much away at the source site.
Nibbles: Law book, Sheep breeding, Pig breeding, Pink mushrooms, Coconut genome, Cassava genome, Apples in the Big Apple, Street food, Irish corner, Peach palm tissue culture, Seed saving, Kenyan farmers, First farmers, Tenure, Peppermint facts, Mountains, Taro network, Shea
- Juliana Santilli guest-blogs on the book Agrobiodiversity and the Law over at Agrobiodiversity Grapevine.
- ICARDA tells communities how to set up a sheep breeding programme.
- While an Indian institute breeds pigs, with Canadian help.
- Another Indian institute does the same for mushrooms, with no help.
- And yet another sequences the coconut genome.
- While BGI sequences a whole bunch of CIAT cassava stuff. Only yesterday they were doing rice. Yeah, but only 50, and you gotta keep those sequencers going, don’t you? Would be nice to know how much the CGIAR is paying BGI annually. Do they get frequent flyer miles? Have they negotiated a corporate rate?
- A Kazakhstan apple tree grows on the East River. A forest, actually. If it had been in England, it might eventually feature here. Ok, ok, our quest for connections is occasionally overdone. Made you look, though.
- Ah, kimchi! Ah, fish empanadas! So much interesting food, only one stomach lining…
- Danny tells us about Ireland’s CWR database. In other news, Ireland has CWR. Oh, and then he goes crazy on the Biodiversity for Nutrition mailing list. Did he get his goat is what I want to know.
- AoB on in vitro peach palms. Why read the paper, when AoB abstracts the abstract?
- Bifurcated Carrots on seed saving in Canada. Video goodness galore.
- And while we’re talking cinema, here’s news of a movie on a year in the life of four Kenyan farmers.
- From Kenyan farmers to First Farmers. The Womb of Nations. I like that. And more. Agricultural hearths. I like that too.
- Four days of discussion about land tenure. May not be enough, actually.
- “…70 per cent of the peppermint sold in the US is descended from a mutant in a neutron-irradiated source.” Good to know.
- I missed International Mountains Day. Again.
- That EU-funded taro mega-project from a PNG perspective.
- What I like about this Worldwatch series on neglected plants is that they’re not factsheets. Yet.