- Search the UK’s living plant collections for errant edibles and their wild relatives.
- Independent origins for aromatic rice varieties?
- I’ll see your rice varieties, and raise you independent cattle domestication in China.
- The scent of a truffle, love it or leave it.
- Improving the yam, with flow cytometry and satellite markers to discover how many chromosome sets they have.
- Going back to nature for the best in cultivated shiitake. With video goodness.
- The @gricultural Revolution, from CTA. Too cute, too loud, too long. With even more video goodness.
- “Local Farmer Grows Beans from the Basque Region.” I guess he’s not local to the Basque region, then, or it wouldn’t be remarkable. Yet more video goodness. Aside: I’ve grown alubias de Tolosa and they are wonderful, but I never was elected a member of the confraternity.
- You want even more video goodness? Here’s some on resilience in coffee farming.
Nibbles: Panama disease, N2Africa, Trees and CC, CITES, Jordanian farmers and CC, ETC poster, Digitization, Wallace video, International Rice Genetics Symposium, Roots and tubers meet, Hybrid maize, Quinoa, Food Security, Israeli boars
- Panama comes to SE Asia. Banana people will understand. And will know what to do?
- Shucks, just missed the N2Africa project first phase results presentation shindig in Nairobi. All about the power and beauty of nitrogen-fixing legumes (geddit?). Jeremy wont let me link to the piece about the project that recently appeared on a well-known site, and he’s right, it’s largely content free. And you can find it if you really want to anyway.
- Climate change? Not a problem, for some plants (including wild relatives?), if there’s trees around. Well, kinda sorta. But it made you look, didn’t it? Are any of them on CITES? Consult the new handy dandy online thingy.
- Ah, but tell that to Abu Waleed and other Jordanian farmers.
- Who are the answer to etc Group’s question: Who will feed us?
- A botanical use for online gaming. Whatever next.
- Celebrating Alfred Wallace via animated video. And why not.
- You want more videos? Here’s a nice explanation of the difference between winter and spring wheat.
- Huge rice genetics meet is apparently a “hot bed of discussion”. For another couple of days. Let us know if you are party to any of that.
- No doubt the same could have been said about the recent 12th International Symposium of the International Society for Tropical Root Crops in Accra.
- Zambian families are better off nutritionally if they grow hybrid maize.
- A handy English translation of an all-consuming post about quinoa in Spanish. And check the photo of quinoa diversity!
- Gary Nabhan explains why “more biodiversity means more food security“.
- Israel’s wild boars are European. I’m biting right through my tongue here.
Nibbles: Soil testing kit, Sustainable farming, Coffee and climate change, BGI genebank, Bamboo genebank, Genebank management, India’s malnutrition, Phenotyping conference, CIP genebank video, CG impact, Feed the World
Luigi went on a three-week trip, and all he came back with was this:
- A new soil testing kit? Really?
- Ok, how about a SciDev Spotlight featurette on sustainable farming? No? Well, can I tempt you with the British Ecological Society on agroecology then?
- Oh, I bet this thing on coffee and climate change will hit home.
- I’m pretty sure news of yet another Chinese genebank (of sorts) won’t.
- Pssst. Got room for a new bamboo genebank too?
- They’ll need a genebank management system, won’t they? GRIN and bear it.
- News too of hunger and malnutrition in India, by Indians, for … er …
- Phenotyping conference, anyone? Anyone at all? Some EU breeders will no doubt be there. And some of them at least will find a new map of water risk useful in their work.
- And to end with, Al Jazeera on the CIP potato genebank. You heard me.
- As you were, there’s the CGIAR Knowledge Day too, all about delivery and impact. I wonder if the genebanks will feature…
- Not so fast, there’s also a live webcast of the conference Feeding the World without Consuming the Planet that awaits you.
Nibbles: Book, Sorghum, Plant breeding, Quinoa, Herbal medicines, Compensation, New varieties, Beers
Here’s a bunch of better-late-than-never links, some of which will be good this time next year.
- A new book on Plant Genetic Resources and Climate Change.
- I expect it covers sorghum, which NPR calls the “camel of crops”.
- Wonder whether they’ll cover sorghum at the Tucson Plant Breeding Institute course in January 2014. h/t Crops for the Future.
- Last week’s International Congress on Quinoa. Pretty sure our invitation got lost in the mail.
- As was our invitation to Kew’s one-day symposium on herbal medicines and food supplements.
- Annals of Botany explains how compensation may underly the benefits of genetic diversity – in Arabidopsis. (And thanks for the shout-out.)
- ICRISAT struts its stuff in Nigeria with new varieties of groundnut and millet. As ever, we ask: who’s looking after the old varieties?
- Diverse beers for Halloween – one to cut out and keep.
Nibbles: Food sovereignty, Calories, Fortilizers, Barley, Climate changed coconuts, Global hunger index, Halloween food, World Food Day
- Native tribes in the US want more food sovereignty.
- People underreport the calories they consume shock. Research sponsored by Coke not a shock.
- For nutritionally fortified food, fortify the fertilizers first.
- German scientists working round to clock to decipher barley DNA and save Oktoberfest from climate-induced drought.
- Climate change, however, is a double-edged sword for coconuts in Guyana.
- 2013 Global Hunger Index says world hunger remains “serious”.
- Is all that scary enough to put you off your food?
- Relax, it’s World Food Day, everything’s gonna be alright.