- The oldest pig in the world is Vietnamese-Canadian.
- Why plant scientists should tweet. And draw.
- Trifecta of apples and other heirloom fruit. Make that four.
- And nuts.
- Making civet crap coffee sustainable.
- Dutch animal genebank moves.
- Will the inmates be fed seaweed? There’s a collection of those, you know?
- More money for to make sweet potato more nutritious.
- Or, you could empower women. Or both.
- Trouble with citrus? No problem, grow peaches.
- World’s coolest garden.
- And why we need even the less cool ones.
- Testing present plants in future climates.
- Who’s who in edible insects.
- Big Food suddenly realizes it has a climate change problem.
Brainfood: Tea cores, Amazonian domestication, Sicilian remedies, Odisha wild veggies, Insect biomass, Energy crops, Adoption, Field size, Rye diversity, Crab breeding
- Worldwide core collections of tea (Camellia sinensis) based on SSR markers. From 788 to 192 doesn’t seem like a great deal.
- Crop Domestication in the Amazon. The first arrivals were not just hunter-gatherers.
- Plant genetic resources and traditional knowledge on medicinal use of wild shrub and herbaceous plant species in the Etna Regional Park (Eastern Sicily, Italy). 71 wild species are used for medicine, but the properties of most are known by only a few informants.
- Traditional knowledge on wild edible plants as livelihood food in Odisha, India. 86 wild species are eaten. No word on the pattern of distribution of knowledge, at least in the abstract.
- Insects in the human food chain: global status and opportunities. The real potential is in animal feed production.
- Energy crops: Prospects in the context of sustainable agriculture. They have a role in Europe to reduce effects of climate change while supporting food security and preserving the environment, but most are in early stages of domestication, and we’ll need more efficient enzymatic systems for the conversion of cellulose, and the development of multiple products.
- Are there systematic gender differences in the adoption of sustainable agricultural intensification practices? Evidence from Kenya. Not for improved seeds, apparently.
- A contemporary decennial global Landsat sample of changing agricultural field sizes. Nine hotspots of field size change, driven by different factors, and not all in same direction. I wonder if you can use this as a proxy for levels of agricultural biodiversity?
- Genome-wide characterization of genetic diversity and population structure in Secale. Limited diversity in improved material, and no structure. Need those genebanks.
- Comparison of the culture performance and profitability of wild-caught and captive pond-reared Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis) juveniles reared in grow-out ponds: Implications for seed selection and genetic selection programs. Wild is best. For now.
Nibbles: Fossil biodiversity, Culture & health, Cicer drought experiment, Endangered fish, Wheat hydridization, Food aid, Ag trade double, Sustainable diets, Fermentation book
- The Global Fossil Record. Visualized. Not agricultural, but couldn’t resist it.
- Malnutrition? It’s the culture, stupid.
- Check out the world’s largest chickpea drought trial.
- Overfishing the Amazon.
- Ah, so that’s how wheat did it!
- Food aid can support sustainable livelihoods too.
- Soon, most crop production will go to feed China’s pigs. And you’ll be able to follow that on FAOStat’s interactive thingie on agricultural tradeflows.
- But it can’t possibly be good for sustainable diets, can it?
- New book on fermentation. Never enough of those.
Nibbles: Bamboo, Green Wall, Rubber, Cacao, Quinoa
- Fancy a bamboo tour of China? Maybe these guys from Alabama will go.
- You can build with it, of course.
- Even help build a wall, perhaps.
- Rubber won’t be much good for that, I guess. But it has its uses.
- Always has.
- And then there’s cacao.
- Sustainable, of course.
- With all that that entails with regard to land rights, for example.
- And let’s stop saying that all these things poor people grow are somehow bad for them, shall we?
Nibbles: BBC series, Pacific breadfruit & yams, Sustainable diets, Cuba atlas, MSB standards, Biofortification on radio, German food scandals, Mexican foods, Non-PC food, CWR interviews, Old Irish sources, ITPGRFA funding, Crop Trust presentations, ISHS, Neural crest and domestication, Wheat genome
- That BBC mega-doc on botany just started.
- PGR News from the Pacific: breadfruit and yams. My former colleagues keeping busy.
- How sustainable is your diet? Here comes the data.
- Cool historical atlas of Cuba has some agricultural stuff.
- The Millennium Seed Bank’s Seed Conservation Standards, final draft.
- Kojo Nnamdi Show on biofortification.
- German sausage and beer industries hit by scandal. What the hell will Luigi survive on?
- Maize beer, maybe. And amaranth.
- Thankfully neither of which have objectionable names.
- Nigel Maxted of University of Birmingham on crop wild relatives.
- His mate and mine Ehsan Dulloo of Bioversity, on the same thing.
- Ancient Irish apples, both wild and cultivated.
- Seed Treaty is short of funds, but they are working on it.
- The Crop Trust is on Slideshare!
- Banana symposium coming up in August.
- A theory of mammal domestication.
- First stab at the bread wheat genome. A tour de force.