- Making a cup of “coffee.” Well, it is for Dunkin’ Donuts.
- Pigs: yum or yuch?
- FAO wants to know about how to teach healthy living in schools.
- You’d have thought it difficult to have a healthy life in the Arctic, but people manage it.
- Our rubber supply is in jeopardy. The raw material, not the product.
- Ethiopian genebank in the development news.
Nibbles: Blueberry genebank, Reviving millets, Alternative rubber, Agave fuel, Breeding coffee, Poisonous plants
- Gorge on blueberries.
- Lunch on millets.
- Bet on guayule.
- Run on agave.
- Pray for coffee.
- Watch out for Sandy Knapp.
Nibbles: Seed access, Funding genebanks, Vote for me dammit, Quality AND yield, Floating gardens, Chocography, Wine heritage double, Uzbeki bread
- African Seed Access Index comes out for Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
- New way to fund crop diversity conservation to be unveiled at FFD3 in Addis Ababa next week.
- “When you looked for ‘Ethiopia’ in a dictionary, it would also always mention ‘famine’. Now that time is over.”
- Vote for me!!!! I so want to win this damn Bioversity photo competition.
- Yes, you can have your long-grain rice and yield too!
- Everybody loves floating gardens.
- Mapping chocolate.
- “Why Is there Wine on the UNESCO World Heritage List?” Why the hell not?
- Lost grapes in Shangri-La. UNESCO beckons?
- Flatbreads rule.
Nibbles: Pope, CGIAR, Agroecology, ABS, Food shortage, World flora, Nutella, Bees, GMOs, CC & wheat, CC & legumes, EU satellite, Seed saving, Wheat breeding, Strawberry breeding, Adopt-a-crop, Organic tea, Malagasy yams, Seed app, Ebola seeds, Sorghum spoons
And we’re back! While we were away…
- …the Pope pontificated on climate change and GMOs, among other things.
- And so did the CGIAR.
- Boffins in the UK suggested that agroecology might be important to sustainable intensification. No word on whether the CGIAR is listening.
- Bioversity asked for contributions on whether ABS can support farmers. No word on whether anyone is listening.
- And The Economist asked: who cares, anyway?
- Google said it would help botanists catalogue all plants.
- Nutella was bad, and then ok again.
- Bees were again found to be important to agriculture, but not all bees.
- The pros and cons of GMOs were trotted out again. And again.
- Climate change was blamed for smaller loaves of bread. Which as far as I can tell might not be a totally bad thing.
- And for the need to grow drought-resistant legumes.
- The EU launched a satellite to monitor crops.
- Meanwhile, people just got on with it, in their own, sometimes weird, way…
- …breeding wheat. Even organic wheat. Even perennial. Even in Scotland.
- …breeding strawberries. Even with wild relatives.
- …or just adopting the raw materials of breeding.
- Growing organic tea in China.
- Conserving yams in Madagascar.
- Trying to find the appropriate seeds to grow in Kenya.
- And giving probably inappropriate seeds to Ebola-hit farmers.
- Which they can now eat using sorghum spoons.
Brainfood: Eastern promise, Biodiversity databases, Pulse carotenoids, Castor oil breeding, Maya beans, NUS and water, Chinese Vitis
- An ethnobotanical perspective on traditional fermented plant foods and beverages in Eastern Europe. 116 taxa, with a preponderance of Rosaceae.
- Estimating species diversity and distribution in the era of Big Data: to what extent can we trust public databases? Trust, but verify.
- Genetic diversity of nutritionally important carotenoids in 94 pea and 121 chickpea accessions. There’s carotenoid diversity in the Canadian collections.
- Role of conventional and biotechnological approaches in genetic improvement of castor (Ricinus communis L.). We have the technology. What we don’t have is results.
- Phaseolus from Cerén—A Late Classic Maya Site. The wilds were also eaten.
- The Potential Role of Neglected and Underutilised Crop Species as Future Crops under Water Scarce Conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some neglected species may be somewhat adapted to low water conditions, perhaps.
- The wild relatives of grape in China: Diversity, conservation gaps and impact of climate change. 15 of 39 species need help, especially as the range of many is expected to be reduced by climate change.