- Got a Neotropical flowering plant to identify? Kew has what you need.
- New Labour goes out with a whimper, and a swipe at cider-makers.
- Drought Timing for Agronomic Screening wins a prize.
- “We’ve heard about the Gene Bank project which serves to preserve certain cultivars and seed specimens, but we don’t know much else about this project.” Par for the course.
- Meanwhile, another genebank does get decent publicity.
- Women and homegardens in Bangladesh.
- Bag farms in Nairobi slum.
- Review of Dirt! The Movie.
- Boffins this close to drought-tolerant cowpeas.
- “…actual grain yield in some regions is already approximating its maximum possible yields while other regions show large yield gaps and therefore tentative larger potential for intensification.”
- The wife is going to the 1st International Symposium on Tropical Horticulture. Jamaica? No, she really wanted to go.
Rebsie’s back
A very warm welcome back to Rebsie Fairholm, the best singing backyard breeder of all time, I reckon. I’m looking forward once again to the vicarious thrill of following her adventures in pea breeding, among much else.
Nibbles: ICUC as was, Rice in Africa, Gardens, Botanical news, Durian, Fish and climate change, Nutrition in India video, Viruses in sweet potatoes, CBD, Wild tomatoes, Forst-tolerant apricots
- Change at the helm at Crops for the Future. Best wishes to all concerned.
- African Rice Congress wraps up. Successfully, no doubt.
- Tell you Sacred Garden story. Go on then…
- Nigel Chaffey rounds up botanical news. The best of the kind, for my money.
- The art of eating durian.
- Bye, and thanks for the fish.
- DFID on undernutrition in India. Very short on specifics. Where’s the varied diets stuff?
- Gotta virus clean those heirloom sweet potatoes.
- Latest from CBD ABS negotiations in Cali. Anybody there want to give us the scoop?
- Endemic wild tomato relatives from Atacama Desert… I dunno…investigated I guess.
- Russian boffin grows apricots in Siberia.
Tackling vitamin A deficiency in Africa one crop at the time
What with high beta carotene sweet potatoes on one side and maize on the other, there will soon be no excuse for anyone in Africa to have vitamin A deficiency. We’ve blogged about this before. Often. The question remains: is it better to push these orange varieties of the staples, or promote diverse diets? Or, indeed, do both.
FAO water boffins forget breeding
FAO has a very slick slide show on the relationship between water, agriculture, food security and poverty. I guess it’s because of World Water Day. But why no mention of crop improvement through breeding? More efficient irrigation is not going to solve this problem on its own, surely.