- Bumper wheat crop forecast. Norman Borlaug comments: “looming catastrophe”.
- Sunflower may have been domesticated independently in Mexico, as well as in the Eastern US.
- Neglected and novel? A cautionary tale about The Miracle Berry from the BBC. Via.
- Hold the phone! World Bank says countries are not going to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Via.
Nibbles: Angola, Peas, Water, Root & tubers, Pollination, Coffee & chocolate, Worms
- Angola gets US$49.5 million to improve agricultural productivity, no mention of biodiversity.
- Yellow sugarsnap peas: an update.
- Guinness wells in Ghana, sorghum farmers not grateful enough.
- Trinidad goes back to its roots.
- More trouble for pollination.
- The Economist on adding value to coffee and cacao.
- “The earth without ____ would soon become cold, hard-bound and void of fermentation, and consequently sterile.” Fill in the blank.
Uganda releases new soybean variety
A brief report on AllAfrica.com says that Ugandan scientists have released a new soybean variety known as MNG 8.10. The variety is resistant to a soybean rust (presumably not Asian soybean rust, or they’d be making a much bigger deal about it) and gives a yield of up to 2.5 tons per hectare.
That’s great news for the breeders and for Uganda’s soybean farmers. Just one churlish question; who will be eating the soybeans? Livestock in Uganda? Livestock in some other country? Or hungry Ugandans?
Nibbles: Irrigation, drought
- Latest Rice Today map: irrigation around the world. Thanks, Robert.
- Coincidentally, there’s a Science article on the genetics of how plants cope with drought, but it’s behind a paywall.
Bye bye, Miss American (Apple) Pie?
Maybe it was the discussion about apple varieties during the 60 Minutes piece on Svalbard:
…in the 1800s in the United States people were growing 7,100 named varieties of apples. 7,100 different varieties of apples that are catalogued,” Fowler explains.
“And how many are there today?” Pelley asks.
“We’ve lost about 6,800 of those, so the extinction rate for apples varieties in the United States is about 86 percent,” he explains.Â
More likely it was just the general interest in genebanks and crop diversity generated by the Svalbard phenomenon. In any case, it is great to see a mainstream publication like The Alantic Monthly waxing lyrical about apple conservation. Via The Fruit Blog.