- Chocolate made from camel milk for the first time. And last?
- “Slow rusting” genes from Ethiopian wheat landraces.
- Brits (and Yanks, for that matter) look for ancient trees in woodlands becoming ever less distinctive.
- The world needs GM rice, but alas “the environment for accepting genetically modified crops is not as good as it should be.” Meanwhile, IRRI keeps hammering away at drought tolerance and resistance to other assorted stresses. It’s hard being rice.
- ICAR looks at the likely effects of climate change on crops and what can be done about it.
- Climate change making Soay sheep (and, incidentally, European fish too) not just smaller, also darker. Speaking of fish, there’s trouble in the Zambezi too, but not necessarily due to climate change. Although…
- A Greek seed bazaar.
- FAO turns to barn owls to stop Laotian rodent plague.
- US food policy destinations on Google Maps.
- Vermicomposting is good news for the Indian textile industry. Vermicomposting: I like saying that word.
Connecting through food
In Bittersweet, a new column on GlobalPost, Matt McAllester writes about how food connects us and the people who cook it to faraway lands.
Last month he went looking for wild boar meat in Baghdad. Obviously like to set himself ambitious targets, our Matt. Anyway, well worth a read. Unfortunately you can’t subscribe to his stuff alone, but GlobalPost is an excellent general news site.
Nibbles: Cheese, Dog genetics, Olives on Crete, Polyploidy, Pollination
- Making French cheese in the Himalayas.
- The latest on how to build your perfect dog.
- “The scientists are putting the all the trees which must be saved into a data bank.” Clever scientists.
- Polyploidization so, so much more than merely the sum of genomes.
- “The expected direct reduction in total agricultural production in the absence of animal pollination ranged from 3 to 8%…” Thank goodness for Operation Pollinator, eh?
Nibbles: Dahlias, Perennials
- Dahlias: good to look at, good to eat.
- Why agriculture bypassed herbaceous perennials, until now.
A menu of political diversity
“Traditional” usually means indigestible or overcooked. “Organic” means it costs more.
I’m not going to fall into the trap of taking satire seriously enough to correct misapprehensions. 1 But that’s a tiny snippet from a very entertaining piece on The Economist’s Europe View. It explains menu items such as Cutlet Carpathian Style 2 and other gems. What I want to know is, could we do the same for traditional, neglected and underutilised species?