Wheat boffins are meeting in St Petersburg. CIMMYT is blogging about it. ICARDA is blogging about it. A whole bunch of people are twittering. So there’s no excuse for not knowing what’s going on.
Nibbles: Rust, Old rice, More old rice, Sticky rice, Mesoamerican balls, Prioritization, Legumes
- Rust boffins meet in St Petersburg. Good luck to them: sounds like they’ll need it.
- Did 3000-year-old rice really sprout in Vietnam? Nah.
- Indian farmers queue up for old rice seeds. Not old as in the Vietnam case above though.
- And more rice. Did the Chinese really use the sticky kind in mortar 1500 years ago? Yep.
- More ancient technology. This time Mayan rubber.
- “…a major leap forward in species-area relationship fitting…”: where will future habitat loss wreak the most havoc on plant species? And on crop wild relatives?
- The pulses of Africa. Well, a couple of them.
Green tomato goes red, gets thumbs up
Rebsie Fairholm at Daughter of the Soil has written up the tomatoes she grew last year. One of them I called Pugliese Green, because the seeds came from a variety I buy at the Pugliese shop around the corner. It is green, sharp and tasty. Rebsie’s went red, but at least she agreed with the taste: she says they will “probably become a flavour benchmark”. I wonder whether mine would go red too if they were left longer on the vine. I’ll have a chance to find out soon enough as my seedlings are coming along fine. Meanwhile, Rebsie, try tasting them a bit green.
Nibbles: Wild coffee in Uganda, Grasspea, Land Institute, Biopiracy, Frog endangered by tea
- Conservation project fails to work. But lessons are learned.
- The archaeology of grasspea. Mainly Aegean, as it turns out.
- Artificial selection can help fill gaps left by other kind.
- Nestlé accused of stealing roiboos.
- Tea or frog?
Nibbles: Nuts, Ug99, Mexican pollinator project, Maize in Africa, Cerrado fruit
- Going nuts in Kyrgyzstan. Ok, sorry, that should read growing. And something similar from Brazil.
- And the bad Ug99 news just keeps on coming. When is wheat gonna catch a break?
- The Campesino a Campesino Pollinator Project. I just love that title.
- Study says “drought tolerant maize will greatly benefit African farmers.” Still no cure for cancer.
- Araticum, Buriti, Pequi, Cagaita, Gueroba, Babassu, Baru: Which one is the next kiwi?