Climate change

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.

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.

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.

The Guide for the Perplexed Entering the Maze of Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. Great title.
IRRI DG blogs about Golden Rice on World Sight Day. In other news, there’s a World Sight Day.
Indian farmers ever more marginal.
If they were in Africa, they’d be producing nutritious school meals.
Book on camel biodiversity.
Turns out Jeremy is part of a movement that he apparently didn’t even know existed.
Are you involved in the UNFCCC agriculture negotiations? You’ll need this handy communications tool-kit. Agricultural biodiversity is in there somewhere.
Not sure that eels are, but maybe they should be.

Paying attention to traditional knowledge to help with climate change … in New England!
Two million New York Botanical Gardens herbarium sheets digitized, possibly including some crop wild relatives.
Map your recipe, an entertaining way to talk about domestication and interdependence in the matter of agricultural biodiversity.
IRRI follows up genebank video with genebank podcast. No idea why.
Speaking of videos, here’s one on lentil breeding in Canada.
Which I don’t think involved drought resistance there, but it probably did elsewhere.
Tribes (not in New England — see above) diversify from trout. Alas freshwater not included in new global fish diversity hotspot map.
Musa taxonomists do their thing.
Millet takes on quinoa. Taxonomists would insist on calling it Panicum miliaceum. I think. Next in the queue is sorghum?
Phenomics in words and images.