Commodity – Page 117 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

Nibbles: Mopane, Evolution, Cacao

Food shopping in Harare includes dried caterpillars by the sackful. Luigi says: “Yum”.
Carnival of Evolution #10 at The Oyster’s Garter. Jeremy says: “Yum”.
Ecological cacao. We all say: “Yum”.

Nibbles: Mopane, Evolution, Cacao

Food shopping in Harare includes dried caterpillars by the sackful. Luigi says: “Yum”.
Carnival of Evolution #10 at The Oyster’s Garter. Jeremy says: “Yum”.
Ecological cacao. We all say: “Yum”.

March 30, 2009March 30, 2009

Nibbles: Soil diversity, Coffee, Ants, Haskap, Biochar

“Spreading antibiotics in the soil affects microbial ecosystems“. No shit.
Drink more (Rwandan) coffee. What about the other coffee countries?
Cane toad nemesis: meat ants. Eeyew.
1st Virtual International Scientific Conference On Lonicera caerulea L. Via .
The biochar backlash. Oliver snips and links.

Happy birthday to me!

And thanks to Charlotte for a present which brings together two pretty cool bits of agrobiodiversity.
cannabis

Nibbles: Coconut, Gene flow

Pacific coconuts need replanting. Quick, alert the media!
Bees don’t just fly down the rows. Quick, alert the media!

1. A North Macedonian professor’s 15-year rescue mission for landraces and crops surviving only in remote villages. Why bother? Stay tuned…
2. Ancient grapevines in Tigray represent a unique genetic lineage with potential value for breeding varieties adapted to dryland conditions.
3. Hawai’i Public Radio checks in on Maui’s coconut genebank. Useful to breed varieties adapted to really wet conditions, presumably.
4. The Cayman Islands are also hoarding coconuts, along with lots of tasty fruits.
5. A USD 400,000 boost from Taiwan for the Eswatini national genebank. Indigenous vegetables get much-needed love.
6. A regional survey of 25 orphan crops across 13 Latin American countries finds quinoa and amaranth well-catalogued, but characterization budgets are the real bottleneck. Collecting and conserving in genebanks is great, but not enough.
7. South Korea puts 330,000 seed accessions under “double lock”, hedging against both climate change and war. Conserving in one place is not enough.
8. FAO warns that nearly a third of the world can’t afford the USD 4.28 a day that a healthy diet costs — nearly three billion people, and rising. That’s why we need al the above, I guess.
Published on July 28, 2026