Commodity

Nibbles: Vavilov double, Huge avocado, African urban ag, Agarwood threat, Double coffee, Sequencing beer, Sloane ranges, Chinese bees, Gendered breeding, Access to seeds/meds, Genebank funding, Quinoa prices, Organic ganja

VIR on Atlas Obscura, with pic goodness courtesy of yours truly. And on the same site, something Vavilov would have approved of: a very diverse Tajik apple orchard.
A new avocado to conjure by.
Urban agriculture won’t cut the mustard.
Trees that named Fragrant Harbour disappearing.
The downside of coffee. But never fear, there’s a strategy coming!
The beernome!
Happy birthday Sir Hans Sloane, for many botanical reasons!
Chinese pollinators in trouble. Enough of the exclamation marks.
Do you have any examples of “plant or animal breeding that has successfully incorporated gender considerations into its strategies and end products”? Contact these people.
Can seeds learn from meds, policy-wise?
Bioversity DG lobbies for genebanks.
Get your fill of quinoa, courtesy of Jeremy.
Sustainable pot. ‘Cause that’s the California Way, man.

You know you want to try black sapote.
Podcast on how to save coffee. And it probably needs it.
Once we’ve saved the cultivated species, maybe we should save it in the wild as well?
If not, there are other species, other drugs, I guess. No, really.
Indigenous fire management in Australia.
Everything you need on lupins. You’re welcome.
Is anyone collecting endophytes? Or microalgae for that matter?
Marvellous interactive atlas of the botanical collecting of Richard Evans Schultes in the Amazon.
Wine yeasts are way inbred. Which can’t be altogether good.
Watermelons need flower diversity.
One does feel for climate-stupid varieties.

“È curioso che il grano Cappelli, ora diventato un simbolo della “pasta da gourmet”, fosse una volta il comune grano della pasta di tutti i giorni, e che venga da alcuni considerato “autoctono” quando in realtà è una varietà tunisina.” Curious indeed.
A woman’s crop? Not as straightforward as it may sound.
State of the World’s Plants symposium, 11-12 May.
Above will no doubt consider crop wild relatives such as the peanut’s.
More on the urban vegetable gardens of Istanbul.
Tree DGs in the garden getting coffee. On International Forest Day.
The “Bernie Sanders” vision of biofortification.
Cowpea to get a genome.
Q&A with John Torgrimson of Seed Savers Exchange.
The resilience of rice: “You never find a crop that can span this latitude and altitude.” Really? Wheat?
Cacao and coffee have a microbial terroir.
Crop mixes are geographically stable.
Prof. Kathy Willis of Kew on Feeding the World, including using crop wild relatives. IRRI Kew genebanks featured.
Denmark interprets EU law to allow seed saving.

Coffee botany resources.
Uncovering the illegal agarwood trade.
Developing the potato bean. First step: find a new name.
Dog taxonomy explained.
Project Baseline sets a, ahem, baseline, for studying plant diversity under climate change.
Ok, random shout-out for my niece Francesca’s work on kudzu bug natural control. Because I can. And she’s fabulous.
Blooming chickpeas!
The inhabitants of Casas Grandes brewed maize beer in the 14th century. Well of course they did.
Peruvian quinoa landscapes have a name: aynokas.
Crop domestication 101.
Where (commercial) breeders go wrong.
Presumably none of above mistakes are made by EU plant breeding companies.
Stimulating plant defences for faster response to pest and disease attack.
Germany told to go for local meadow seeds.
Use of shea butter trees goes way back.