- Learn about iron beans from a HarvestPlus video, maybe.
- Learn about the tomato in Ghana, more than you might need to know if you read all the reports.
- Learn how Andy Jarvis spoke truth to ex-power, about fruit data gathering project prospects.
- Learn how the Africa College, based at Leeds University in the UK, is working on a range of agricultural problems.
Nibbles: Trojan Horse? Farmer preferences, Yucca moths, Bees, GM bananas, Coffee
- This is not a Trojan Horse. Madcap agrobiodiversity antics in Abruzzo, Italy. No, I don’t get it either.
- Farmers are willing to forego some extra income or yield to obtain a more stable and environmentally adaptable crop variety. They are? Someone tell the Nabobs.
- Yucca moths and yuccas; an astonishing evolutionary story.
- Bee research gets USD1.5 million for a big database. Hope it helps.
- “GM bananas could cut blindness, anaemia in East Africa.” Because nothing else will?
- Coffee, a history.
Nibbles: CGIAR “change”, Cuba, Data, Pavlovsk, Homegardens, Soil bacteria, Thai rice
- GFAR publishes list of Megaprogramme (or whatever they are called) consultations.
- Cuba’s Miscellaneous Crops Under-delegate Rolando Macias Cardenas reports on tomato paste. In other news, Cuba has a Miscellaneous Crops Under-delegate. No, wait, that’s not really news.
- While Sachs et al. moan about better agricultural data, CIAT go out and get it.
- The Pavlovsk TweetMedvedev campaign rolls on.
- “…maximum diversity can be conserved at an intermediate level of income” in Javanese bamboo-tree homegardens.
- Right, so trees “farm” bacteria. What some people will write in a press release.
- Thailand’s rice farmers trying to cope with climate change. Like they have a choice.
Beer drinkers finally get recognition they deserve
We have been keeping an interested eye on the apparent resurgence of sorghum in some parts of Africa, driven by climate change, sure, but also by man’s (and woman’s) unquenchable thirst for beer. The latest story along those happy lines comes from Kenya. It might have remained a mere Nibble, but for the coincidental appearance of a study suggesting that “beer drinkers can serve as role models for the nation as it struggles to emerge from recession.” In Britain and, presumably, in Africa too.
LATER: Oh, and this just in too. A fine day for beer drinkers indeed.
Nibbles: Oil palm, Breadfruit, Barcoding, Guyana genebank, Wheat and heat
- Palmhugger, an oilpalm advocacy group, likens Greenpeace to Goebbels. Who are they really? CIFOR is linking to them on Facebook, so they’re probably kosher, right?
- Nice story on breadfruit in Hawaii.
- More barcoding stuff.
- Reader: We must have a bank of seeds of our fruits and vegetables. Minister of Agriculture: We do!
- Australian wheat boffins: “Adaptation strategies need to be considered now to prevent substantial yield losses in wheat from increasing future heat stress.”