- Did you miss us? Well, we’re making up for lost time today. Buckle up.
- Seafaring mangoes.
- India to help PNG get (another?) genebank.
- Somebody mention taro? The Chinese are coming.
- Strawberries for Christmas.
- Handheld genotyping. Brave new world.
- All the sheep in the world.
- Trees > lungs.
- Pink pineapple. Yeah, why not.
- Tuscan olives are Etruscan.
- Wonder if they’ll survive.
- Fermentation never went away.
- Case in point #1: pulque.
- Which is a cousin of mezcal.
- Case in point #2: cheese.
- Of which this is the most expensive, apparently.
- 2018 is the year of italian food, according to italians.
- Maybe they’ll use this infographic to advertize it.
- The transatlantic history of a mainstay of italian cooking, the tomato.
- Which looks really diverse in the Canaries too.
- “Food spy” is a bit harsh on Fairchild.
- Wonder if he ever collected vanilla.
- Or potatoes.
- Hero is about right for Segenet.
Nibbles: Problematic edition
- That claim of Neolithic Georgian wine is, ahem, problematic.
- Yam cultivation can be, ahem, problematic.
- Neglecting women in breeding programmes can be, ahem, problematic.
- Khat cultivation is, ahem, problematic.
- Post-conquest depictions of the cacao plant were, ahem, problematic.
- Imperial plant collecting was, ahem, problematic. But the BBC doesn’t care.
- I find the claim that the potato saved Europe from war, ahem, problematic.
- No problem at all about cooking taro.
Nibbles: Joanne Labate, Gebisa Ejeta, David Spooner, Strawberry 101, Mad honey, First figs, Agrobiodiversity maps, School project, Takesgiving, Private investment
- USDA vegetable crop curator tells it like it is.
- $5 million to find more Striga resistance genes in sorghum.
- Wild potato herbarium specimens find good home.
- How two New World strawberries got together in the Old World and then spread all over the world.
- Hallucinogenic honey: what could possibly go wrong?
- First farmers gave a fig.
- The other of all agrobiodiversity map mashups.
- Cool school project on crop diversity in Europe.
- In other news, “Columbusing” is a thing.
- Private sector investment in conservation: Turning “small and new” into “big and familiar.”
Nibbles: Coffee nomenclature, Sardinian pasta, Kernza, Wheat landraces, Roman sauce, Czech potato, Yeast et al, Agricultural biodiversity, Apple seedlings
- Coffee: variety or varietal?
- Malloreddus: from Campideno or Campidano?
- Wheat: annual or perennial?
- Landrace conference: to go or not to go?
- Garum: to be or not to be?
- Potato: but blue?
- Microbial collections: to charge or not to charge?
- Agrobiodiversity: use it or lose it?
- Apples: but seedlings?
Nibbles: Agrobiodiversity Index, PPB, Heirloom rice, CATIE genebank, Faberge potato, Val @CePaCT, Nigerian food, Ethnobotanical book, Hope Jahren quote
- Bioversity DG lobbies for the Agrobiodiversity Index.
- One of her staff lobbies for participatory plant breeding. And he’s not the only one.
- Maybe they could tackle Indian rice next?
- Protecting cacao at CATIE.
- Faberge had a potato, of all things, and it’s a beaut.
- Celebrating Valerie Tuia, until recently genebank manager at SPC. Faberge taro, anyone?
- The Nigeria food database includes taro, but only leaves.
- The Digital atlas of traditional agricultural practices and food processing weighs 10kg, but seems a stone-cold Faberge-level masterpiece. Not sure if it has much on taro, though.
- “Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.”