- Representing two centuries of past and future climate for assessing risks to biodiversity in Europe. Temperature up 3-6°C throughout Europe by end of century, rainfall down in south, up in north. Sounds lovely.
- Gourmandizing Poverty Food: The Serpa Cheese Slow Food Presidium. Trying to bring back a lost Portuguese cheese is romantic and elitist. Wish they’d just say what they really mean.
- Genetic diversity of wild grapevine populations in Spain and their genetic relationships with cultivated grapevines. If there’s a genetic contribution of wild grapevines to cultivated in Spain, it’s not great.
- Revisiting the origin of the domestication of noni (Morinda citrifolia L.). Let’s just say Pacific islanders won’t be pleased.
- The desert and the sown: Nomad–farmer interactions in the Wadi Faynan, southern Jordan. Changes from sedentarism to pastoralism are mainly due to chance.
- Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni, source of a high-potency natural sweetener: A comprehensive review on the biochemical, nutritional and functional aspects. Not just sweetness, folic acid, vitamin C and all of the indispensable amino acids except tryptophan too.
- Gene flow among wild and domesticated almond species: insights from chloroplast and nuclear markers. The main insight being that it happens a lot, in both directions.
- Agricultural Technology, Crop Income, and Poverty Alleviation in Uganda. New peanut varieties increase incomes and reduce poverty, but aren’t enough on their own.
- Plant diversity improves protection against soil-borne pathogens by fostering antagonistic bacterial communities. It sure does, at least in a long-term grassland.
Nibbles: Sunflower breeding, Indian cows, New varieties and income, Climate change and extinction, Honeybee threat, Figs, Apple history, DIY Luffa, IRRI DDG blog
- The Russian sunflowers are coming! The Russian sunflowers are coming!
- Holy cow! Can’t do better than The Hindu’s headline. And more.
- CIMMYT says groundnut varieties good for income. ICRISAT unavailable for comment.
- But are they climate-proof?
- Because it could be worse than we thought for many species. And more. And what it means for in situ.
- The latest on what’s killing bees.
- The fig, in all its recondite glory.
- Apples of France, Part Deux.
- All you ever wanted to know about growing your own luffa.
- IRRI DDG tries his hand at growing a rice crop. And blogs about it to boot. A nice idea, which should be widely emulated in the CG.
Nibbles: Apples, Koraput recognized, Nuts
- Cynthia gives us her personal history with apple diversity, and the history of Tarte Tatin; yum!
- Farmers in Koraput, India, recognized as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS).
- Ugandan farmers who select one of four new groundnut varieties increase incomes. Good to know. What happens to the old varieties?
Leftovers: Coconuts, Genebank, Vegetables, Famine, Danish, Bissap, Brazil nuts, Dates, Papas y mas, Fruit, Rice, Everything
We found these nibbles at the back of the fridge, and they’re not too mouldy, so lets fry them up before we get anything fresh.
- Boss of India’s agricultural research exhorts international coconut genebank to do more and be heard.
- And, first out of the gate for 2012, Nepal says it will create a new genebank for plants “on the verge of extinction”.
- Immigrant urban agriculture — in Cleveland, Ohio.
- Aid man Edward Carr interviewed: “drought does not equal famine”
- Meetings on “biodiversity” in Europe, under the Danish presidency. Indigestible?
- Hibiscus tea, what a tonic.
- Resources Research goes crazed for book about brazil nuts, and other Amazonian agrobiodiversity.
- A cure for Bayoud disease of dates? And it’s based on medicinal plants!
- Pueblos andinos reciben ejemplares de tubérculos nativos. Otra vez?
- Guerilla grafting? Now there’s an idea for “covert agriculture”. Wonder what the graftees think.
- “The giant panda of the botanical world”? Blimey. A new reserve for real wild rice.
- Huge Satoyama-style paper from Bioversity on THE USE OF AGROBIODIVERSITY BY INDIGENOUS AND TRADITIONAL AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITIES IN: ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE And they’re the ones doing the shouting.
Nibbles: Rice genes, Wheat flour
- “[R]ice plants in hotter and drier parts of Australia tend to be more genetically diverse“. Which means, natch, that they’re “a bulwark against climate change”.
- USDA tests wholewheat flour from 14 different varieties for their value in baking. Which varieties? They aren’t saying.