- Another day, another tree disease threatens the British landscape.
- Some Swedish trees are not doing too well either.
- Seeds of Trade. A virtual book at the NHM. Lots of info on the history of crops.
- What are the pollination needs of a particular crop? FAO will tell you if you ask nicely.
- Purple tea in Kenya. Luigi’s mother-in-law not impressed.
Nibbles: Teosinte, Books, Striga control, Civet coffee, Frog poaching, Edible flowers
- How teosinte lost its shell. Not another Just-so story
- Search more than 450 publications from Bioversity International. Just-so!
- Push-pull solution to maize pests in Africa. What again? Yes, again! Just do it.
- “One time, harvesters sold her regular beans glued to unidentified dung.” And more weird food naughtiness.
- Flowers you can eat.
Fairtrade quinoa vodka hits the stores
Oliver Morton alerts me on Twitter to the existence of a fairtrade quinoa vodka. The “first fairtrade certified vodka in the world,” no less. The quinoa comes from Bolivia, but the vodka is made in France as a joint venture.
The quinoa used by FAIR Vodka is cultivated by over 1,200 small producers in the Bolivian Altiplano and gathered within the Anapqui cooperative, the main association of farming producers in the country. With a strong focus on sustainability, FAIR is keen to build long-term relationships with their partnered cooperatives along with their communities in order to ensure their continued development.
A quick look around the intertubes did not reveal much in the way of other alcoholic beverages made from quinoa, apart from a reference to its use in making a type of chicha in Ecuador. Anyone know more?
Nibbles: Rice conservation and use, Tunisian genebank, Buno, Popcorn, Sustainability, Brazilian social networking, Strawberry breeding, Sunflower genomics, Climate change and fisheries
- Lots of Indian rice in the IRRI genebank. Any of it being used to develop drought-tolerant varieties?
- Lots of journalists in the Tunisian genebank.
- How they make coffee in Ethiopia.
- How they make popcorn the world over. You sometimes get popcorn (or popped sorghum) with coffee in Ethiopia, now I think of it. And since we’re on an Ethiopian kick, fancy some enjera? Gary Nabhan did.
- “Productivity vs. sustainability is a ‘false choice.’” Well I never. And probably not news to these people either, or these. But to these guys?
- A Twitter roundup from Embrapa.
- Ugly hybrid of two wild strawberries may cause allergies.
- Explanation of evolution of doubled genes in wild and cultivated sunflowers certainly causes pain in brain.
- Some good climate change news for the Atlantic croaker. Being a glass-totally-empty kinda guy I predict it tastes like shit.
Nibbles: Heirloom veggies, Rubber, Breadfruit
- Royal Horticultural Society asks Welsh gardeners to “bring out their dead” (TM Cherfas).
- Rubber photos.
- More on breadfruit from our friend Diane Ragone.