- Rats to New Zealand.
- 300 grand grant to develop an iron bullet.
- Yummie, that tomato tastes very umami!
- “When they call their toxic products ‘kava’, they are misusing the word.”
- Subscribe to the Semilla Besada newsletter.
- Gates Foundation helps FAO improve African agricultural statistics. About time someone did.
- How to conserve rare plants.
- As if climate change is not bad enough, there’s also ozone to worry about. Thankfully, Michigan is on it.
- Boffin uses nanotubes to measure chilli hotness. Useful because some don’t like it hot.
Nibbles: Taste, Guano, Breeding squared, Satellites, Subsidies, Harakeke, Pomegranate
- Who put pepper in my shiraz? Human diversity meets grape diversity meets pepper diversity.
- High-priced fertilizers bring guano back. No shit. Via.
- Rebsie breeds a unique red-podded pea. Gregor repeats, “You go girl.”
- Another backyard breeder bares all. Mass crosses, mass selection.
- Eye in the sky informs on crop performance. No comment (yet) from Larry and Sergei.
- Understanding the US Farm Bill. Questions?
- Things to do with Phormium tenax.
- Popular as a pomegranate? Via.
Nibbles: Potato, Myanmar, Coffee, Vetch, Rotations
- Spud War-of-words hots up.
- Meanwhile, in the real world, Irrawaddy delta farmers head back to their seawater-covered fields. Thank goodness for all those salinity-tolerant rice varieties, eh?
- Partake of the Ethiopian coffee ceremony.
- Hairy boffin breeds hairy vetch.
- Complex rotations better for yields. Diversity is good in time as well as space!
Breeding clubs
As in many other (most?) walks of life, there is much that professional breeders can learn from “amateurs” (i.e., farmers), and vice versa. The experience of the taro breeders’ club in Samoa is a good example of that. Danny has already blogged for us about this. There are also examples of livestock (and pet) breeders’ clubs, and plenty of them according to Google. Many more than for crops, it looks to me. I don’t know much about such livestock clubs, and would welcome more information on how successful they have been, and whether we who are more into crops can learn anything from their experience. Anyway, there’s a great discussion of the advantages of the club approach to breeding crops for pest resistance in a downloadable recent 1995 IDRC publication. It’s accompanied by a list of crops best avoided by clubs, though the Evil Fruit Lord begs to differ.
Nibbles: Sprouts, Mice, Prices, Prices, Prices, Prices, Gooseberry, Fruits, Fruits, Subsidies, Climate change, Fruits again, Culture, Irrigation
- Brussels sprout variety lost and found in Wales. Alas, it’s an F1. Start breeding now.
- Mice destroying Australian sorghum. Pied Piper unavailable for comment.
- Impact of prices in Ethiopia.
- Impact of prices in Kenya.
- Impact of prices in Latin America.
- Biofuels not to blame for food price rises. Fatuous, Jeremy comments.
- Uttar Pradesh State Biodiversity Board steps in to save rare Indian gooseberry. Is this it? Doesn’t seem rare.
- Pitaya explained. Check out the links too.
- “Picture it, an orange grape!” No thanks.
- The Economist on the CAP. Money quote: …if Europeans want to produce food in a special region or way, “let them label it, and see if the market will pay for it.â€
- Speaking of which. British wine industry in trouble. You heard me.
- Other fruits not doing well either. Via.
- Royal Ploughing Ceremony goes well in Cambodia. That’s all right then.
- On the other hand, there may be something to this traditional knowledge stuff after all.