Climate change

January 17, 2010January 17, 2010

Nibbles: Indian apples, Taro leaf blight, Pachira

Video on the effect of climate change on apple cultivation in Himachal Pradesh.
Video on taro breeding in the Dominican Republic.
Photos of Malabar chestnut.

January 15, 2010January 15, 2010

Nibbles: Cyanide, Pollinators, Artemisia, AnGR

More carbon dioxide means more cyanide in cassava, relative to protein. Will the good news never end?
Pollinators like diversity too.
Another day, another genome.
FAO surveys livestock conservation community “to evaluate the current status of existing national and multicountry conservation arrangements and reveal the possibilities for regional collaboration in the future.”

January 15, 2010

For your bookshelf

Just a quick note on two books on subjects close to our hearts here at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog: climate change and agriculture, and mapping species distributions. We’ll be trying to get hold of them for review. Preferably for free. Hint hint.

January 14, 2010January 14, 2010

Nibbles: Butchered, Drought, Extension, Deforestation, AnGR, Soyabean, Sagittaria, Urban ag, Grasslands

Locavore carnivores learn their chops.
Researchers from Michigan to study drought in East Africa.
Researchers from Michigan to improve African access to research.
Get online to save the Amazon.
“When the National Animal Germplasm Program (NAGP) opened its doors a decade ago, it started out with genetic material from 40 lines of chicken…”
And today’s genome sequencing project is…
Hunting wapato.
Mexican agriculture comes to LA.
Today’s answer to climate change is…

January 13, 2010January 13, 2010

Nibbles: Breeding, Vegetables, Early agriculture, Breeding course, Nabhan, Gardens, Sequencing twice, er no, once.

Solanum porno.
Veggie tourism.
Something else to blame climate change for. Not.
Wanna learn breeding?
Gary does Turkey.
Podcast on school gardens.
Department of improbable claims: Sunflower genome holds the promise of sustainable agriculture.
Ok then Mr Cynical, how about woodland strawberry, then?
Not so fast, Mr Sunshine: No strawberry genome ::sniff::

1. What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
2. Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
3. Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
4. What has the US National Plant Germplasm System ever done for anyone? The Guardian, the NY Times and NPR News lay it out. I guess someone in D.C. needs it laid out, but will it make any difference?
5. Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
6. Here’s The Guardian again, but this time thinking it is making the case for not putting seeds in the fridge, whereas in fact it’s making the case for the complementarity of ex situ and on-farm conservation.
7. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
8. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
9. Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
10. And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
11. And genebanks can be so beautiful, like works of art. Former Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí lays out his citrus samples. I wonder what he could do with olives.
12. Botanic gardens are beautiful and often act a little bit like crop genebanks. Here’s an example from Portugal I stumbled onto recently, I forget how.
13. You know what I’d like to see? An international pepper genebank, that’s what. No, not the kind that might be in those Guatemalan community seedbanks or the WorldVeg genebank. This sort of pepper. Piper pepper.
14. I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
15. Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
16. No, not using ancient DNA, but actually…
Published on April 4, 2025