- Growing coffee at 2400m could be the new normal.
- A history of coffee rust, thanks to Prof. Stuart McCook and WCR. Not much of a problem at 2400m.
- Oh and here’s a podcast on the history of coffee, an interview with the author of Coffeeland: “drinking coffee is a symptom of working for other people.” Lot of that lately: In Our Time, Eat This Podcast.
- Breeding grapes the smart way. That just seems to mean have access to a germplasm collection and choose your parents carefully.
- Which is what Borlaug did. Ok, plus he was lucky.
- Hunan gets a genebank. Prosperity ensues.
- Could there have been a Green Revolution in Westeros? With that genetics?
Nibbles: Taste edition
- The Stairway to Heaven of barley breeding for whiskey involves thinking about taste a bit more.
- Taste comes into maize breeding too.
- Jeremy talks taste with Margot Finn. Oh and there’s his latest newsletter.
- Farmerama podcasts on cereals in small-scale farming in the UK and beyond.
- Nothing small-scale about ancient farming in the Nile Valley.
- Make ancient Roman bread during lockdown. Then compare and contrast with the Egyptian kind?
- What did the Romans ever do for the rural economy of Britain anyway?
- Course on communicating the value of biodiversity. Wasn’t all the above enough?
Nibbles: Tissue culture, Kenya pulses, Remote sensing, Planetary Computer, CIAT genebank, Faba bean, Cassava breeding, European re-wilding, Russian citrus, Green wine
- Special Issue “Role of Plant Tissue Culture in Agricultural Research and Production.” Deadline: 15 September. This year, I imagine.
- Kenya decolonizing it’s pulse sector.
- And it may be visible from space.
- Somebody mention space? Microsoft is way ahead of you.
- CIAT’s genebank working through lockdown, denies Phaseolus is colonial.
- How about soya then? That’s pretty colonial, surely? Ah, but faba is the new soya. Census takers unavailable for comment.
- Speaking of CIAT and its genebank, the rise and rise of cassava in Asia. And Nigeria? Let the neo-colonialism discourse begin.
- Re-wilding is not colonialism, is it?
- You can grow your lemons underground if it’s cold. Or just for the hell of it, frankly, because why not? Oh, yeah, there’s also breeding.
- Booze goes green. But not so green as to support genebanks.
Nibbles: Simran on Svalbard, Egyptian cotton, AgroecologyNow, Breeding trifecta, Rum, Potato double, Banana map, Climbing beans, Vegetable relatives, Cashew industry, Mongolian herders
- Simran Sethi’s Svalbard speech. See everything below for other examples of the importance of agricultural biodiversity.
- Egypt did not take good care of its cotton germplasm, and it went badly for them.
- AgroecologyNow has regular updates. Great name, by the way.
- Breeding for salt tolerance.
- Breeding for photosynthetic rate.
- Breeding as both science and art? Not entirely convincing, but ok.
- Making the most of sugarcane. Yeah, you guessed it, rum. There’s certainly an art to that.
- Not sure what brought on another humble-bragging potato piece, but I’m not complaining. Two pieces, in fact.
- Hey, we’re going to have a world banana map soon. Yes, another one. But this one will be different…
- Beans are climbing the list of important African crops. See what I did there?
- Vegetables have wild relatives too.
- Arizona has some interesting foods, old and new. Including vegetables.
- Cashew is the new avocado.
- Blockchain for Mongolian cashmere? I can’t rule it out.
- Sorghum is set to take over the South. Of the US, that is.
Brainfood: Cropland map, Wild spinach collecting, CC double, Cacao diversity, Oilpalm footprint, Algal genebanks, Potatoes & gas, S African livestock, Silk Road cereals, Pests & CC
- Global synergy cropland map. Yes, another one.
- Acquisition and regeneration of Spinacia turkestanica Iljin and S. tetrandra Steven ex M. Bieb. to improve a spinach gene bank collection. CGN plugs some gaps.
- Recent responses to climate change reveal the drivers of species extinction and survival. Niche shifts more important than dispersal in avoiding extinction.
- Climate change responses benefit from a global food system approach. Well I never.
- Morphological characterisation and evaluation of cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) in Trinidad to facilitate utilisation of Trinitario cacao globally. Some combine large seeds with high seed numbers.
- The environmental impacts of palm oil and its alternatives. Not as bad as you may think.
- Macroalgal germplasm banking for conservation, food security, and industry. Liquid cultures in dormancy is the way to do it, apparently.
- Simple Sequence Repeat-Based Genetic Diversity and Analysis of Molecular Variance among on-Farm Native Potato Landraces from the Influence Zone of Camisea Gas Project, Northern Ayacucho, Peru. So what will be done about it?
- Livelihood, Food and Nutrition Security in Southern Africa: What Role Do Indigenous Cattle Genetic Resources Play? A big role which in in danger and could in fact be bigger.
- 5,200-year-old cereal grains from the eastern Altai Mountains redate the trans-Eurasian crop exchange. Wheat and barley in the Altai one thousand years before we thought.
- Complex responses of global insect pests to climate warming. 41% of 31 globally important phytophagous insect pests will increase in severity, jury out on what will happen with the others.