Climate change

Nibbles: GMO promises promises, African livestock outside & in, Vegetables galore, Farmer videos from US & Sri Lanka, Fermentation beery & otherwise, Yam people & traits, Botanic garden diversity, ECPGR, CWR in US & Benin, Herbarium data, Baobab info, Olean info, Pix, Indian cooking

Nature “celebrates” 30 years of GMOs.
African pastoralists know how not to destroy their livelihoods shock.
African urban dwellers keep livestock shock.
Vegetables can be perennial too. Oh yes indeedy. Not bitter gourd though, alas. Nor cucumber. And in other news, there’s a Bitter Melon Council. And also a campaign to promote zucchini in Iowa.
Climate change reaches farmers in the Pacific NW. Can their Sri Lankan colleagues be far behind?
Always good to have a beer story. Well, maybe not.
Speaking of fermentation, this WSJ piece looks interesting, from the two sentences of it I can read. No, wait. Oh crap, try this.
A hummus dip goes really nicely with beer. Is this the quinoa story again?
A yam conference for the ages. Will they discuss the new trait ontology?
Botanic gardens reach out. Genebanks next? Maybe not.
You mean like the European ones, perhaps?
That US CWR paper from the horse’s mouth. And a similar thing from Benin. But where does all that data come from?
Baobab notes to go with all those factsheets.
The Saharan olive needs a factsheet too. IRD obliges.
Cool set of agriculture photos.
A couple of different views of Indian food. Thanks to Cara de Silva and Diana Buja.

Summary of that 14th Session of the CGRFA we were all following last week.
Conferences on “Changes in alpine and arctic flora under climate change” we’ll all be following in September. If you’re from Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, the organizers need you in particular. But hurry, before it’s too late!
In other news, young scientists are into beer.
India’s Directorate of Sorghum Research gets a genebank. Relationship with NBPGR unclear.
Media portrayals of pastoralists in Kenya, China and India: The Report. The Brief. The Press Release. ILRI reaction?
Neglected crops get the genomic treatment. And why that might be a good thing.
CIAT wades in on quinoa.
Call for information on Physalis peruviana cultivation in Europe.
Biodiversity databases have errors! Shock! Horror! Probe!
The nutritional difference between organic and conventional tomatoes deconstructed.
Your maple sugaring questions answered. Nice idea.
Double crop for development. I guess that’s the sustainable intensification everyone is talking so much about.
If in doubt, clone it!
Wait, wait, wait, we missed Earth Day?
And also a bunch of UK plant science conferences. (I had of course linked to the storifications here originally, but they’ve gone now of course.)

Bioversity reports on a meeting to plan research on agroecology in Cuba.
“Global food production is increasing steadily, and the global food supply is becoming more stable”. Nothing to see, move along.
Greeks just wild about saffron.
And rice researchers crazy about wild rice as source of salt tolerance.
On the road with Kew photographer, seeking clues to climate change and coffee. (p.s. I’m pretty certain the “magnificent wild banana tree” is a magnificent wild enset herb) (p.p.s. There are actually lots of silly little mistakes in the piece. Buck up, Kew.)

Texan farmers have solved the problem of open sesame – with non-shattering varieties.
They’re protected by patents, of course. No need then for handy dandy guidelines to access and benefit sharing in research projects.
But you just know that ABS will be a hot topic when they round up the usual suspects for the International Symposium on Agrobiodiversity for Sustainable Development.
As will the question of whether yields are becoming more or less sensitive to temperature.
I wonder how quickly the proceedings of that shindig will become available. It took the 2nd International Symposium on Underutilised Species less than two years! Course, they’re still not open access …
No free access to the IncrEdibles festival at Kew either. And why should there be?
I’m willing to guarantee that cat-tail pollen will not be featured at Kew.
Arepas, on the other hand…

Blogging machine Tom Barnett worried about effect of climate change on his favourite tipple.
BGCI shell out for cool animation on social role of botanic gardens, and it’s totally worth it.
As also, but differently, are IUCN’s videos on forest restoration.
All the world’s forests, online, any day now, to monitor the opposite of their restoration.
Europe tries to stimulate innovation in plant breeding. By holding a meeting. Ah, but there’s a hashtag.
Development economists illustrate interesting point about gender and yam cultivation with photo of sweet potatoes.
The organic attitude to inorganic nitrogen.
Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers ate fish. Well I never.
Reviews of couple books on agricultural origins.
Need bioinformatics training? Who doesn’t.
ICRAF reviews efforts to monitor sustainable intensification. Somewhere. I can’t for the life of me find the actual document.