- Yes, because the world desperately needs a map of “handheld, filled snacks from around the world.”
- Paddies and aquaculture go well together. But didn’t we know that already? And wait, synergise is a verb?
- Article with interesting-sounding title about the use of IT to monitor wheat diseases has nothing to do with using IT to monitor wheat diseases.
- Oh that’s enough for today, I’m just not in the mood. As you might have noticed.
- No, wait, I feel better now. Ah, the restorative power of beer and genebanks.
- And of chocolate.
- Which does not feature among the first three African PGIs.
Nibbles: Fruit hunters, Organic interview, Hunger review, Jamaican seeds, Project evaluation, Horse domestication, Maize then and now, Impact studies, Seed kits, Amazon ranching, Habitat restoration, Native potato manual, SRI
- CBC documentary on collectors of fruit diversity. Anyone seen it?
- Matthew Dillon of Seed Matters on organic seeds.
- IFAD bigwig deconstructs Conway’s One Billion Hungry. Great summary of 400+ pages. Diversified farming systems are in there, kinda sorta.
- Jamaican bill calls on someone or other to “maximize internal intra and inter-species variation to boost benefits.” They need to fix the title too. It has something to do with the ITPGRFA.
- How to evaluate fisheries and aquaculture projects. Nothing in there about the importance of genetic diversity in these systems, or indeed their possible effects on the biodiversity around them.
- Sculptures of horses with tack from middle of Saudi Arabian desert may push date of domestication way back.
- Maize a staple, not a ceremonial condiment, in early Peruvian coastal civilizations. And also in Timor Leste for that matter. One does worry about those local landraces, though.
- Latest examples of impact of investments in agricultural R&D from EIARD. Includes African indigenous veggies!
- AVRDC sends vegetable seed kits to Mali. Including indigenous species, but apparently only improved varieties.
- Anthropologist goes to Amazon, learns not to look down his nose at ranchers.
- Millennium Seed Bank helping to restore Falkland habitats. That sort of thing can be a business, you know?
- Manual for the conservation and improvement of Chiloe’s native potatoes. Should have something similar for maize in Timor, eh? And African indigenous veggies too?
- You remember yesterday’s Nibble about SRI? Here’s more oil on the fire.
Nibbles: Organic tomato goodness, Golden Rice timeline, Beet nutrient changes, Finger millet intensification, Apple pix, Sourdough fungi, Rotational goodness, Bioversity DG, World Food Prize
- Another view of that organic tomatoes, stress and nutrients study that was all over the place yesterday.
- IRRI provides a reality check on Golden Rice. Maybe they should just have stressed it.
- Speaking of which, have we already linked to this piece on how beet has got poorer in nutrients?
- Thinking of setting up a map portal? Say about the geographic distribution of nutritional problems? Read this first.
- From SRI to SFMI. Yeah, but what is happening to nutrient levels?
- Did we also link to these pretty photos of apples before? Well, I don’t care, it’s worth seeing them again. And just imagine how much the different varieties differ in nutrients.
- How nutritious is sourdough anyway? Anyone?
- Yeah, yeah, but is rotation good for nutrient content?
- Which will all be very interesting to the new Bioversity DG, no doubt.
- Not to mention to some of the potential candidates for the World Food Prize.
Nibbles: Svalbard, Wayne Smith, Salinity, Tasty sorghum, NUS conference, Med collecting, Income and diversity, Agricultural packages
- Canadian genebank sends seeds to Svalbard.
- And Plant Breeder of the Year goes to… Bet you he used the genebank a lot.
- Dubai told to grow local plants to save water. There’s a genebank for that.
- More digestible sorghum down to one gene. Probably came from a genebank.
- A conference on neglected and underutilized species. And the genebanks that conserve them?
- Collecting on Mediterranean islands for Kew’s genebank. Nice gig if you can get it.
- Richer farmers more likely to adopt improved varieties. To him that has… So I guess genebanks should go to the poorer farmers to collect landraces? Always wondered about that.
- Can I help it if everything came up genebanks today?
- Well, almost everything. Agricultural packages unwrapped by the Archaeobotanist.
Nibbles: Rwandan genebank, Quinoa consumption, Pre-Columbian garden, Tomatoes, Aerobic rice, World record potatoes
- Today’s new national genebank for food security? Step proudly forward, Rwanda!
- Bolivians are eating three times more quinoa. Or maybe three times more Bolivians are eating quinoa.
- Growing history in a pre-Columbian English cottage garden.
- Bland tomatoes all down to the lack of volatiles.
- Daily Kos spreads the Guardian’s gospel of SRI rice; so is aerobic rice a step down that path?
- Speaking of which, those Bihari farmers have snagged a world record potato harvest, using organic methods, and a relatively new variety from Indian breeders.