- Building a better Hayward kiwi.
- Adapting to Nagoya.
- But if the Treaty works, maybe you wont need to. And that includes farmers’ rights, of course.
- The Caucasian Spinach is a new one on me, but I’d try it.
- Eating insects is safe. But I suspect that was never the issue.
- What have patents ever done for us?
- Europe’s forests are in a state. See what I did there?
- Yes, it’s time for this year’s seasonal “wild rice” story.
- The non-meat future of protein.
- Does bread even have a future?
- Well, how would you describe an apple? Maybe by use? In the meantime, Tom “The Appleman” Adams is taking the next step.
- Dog domestication explained.
- Nice map of what climate change will do to crops. Spoiler alert: it’s not good.
- The beauty of seeds.
Nibbles: Nepal earthquake, Vavilov visit, Conservation strategies, Insects & markets, Hydrid breeding, Women & agrobiodiversity, Indian minor crops, Wes Jackson, Drought tolerance, Wheat shindig, Industry support
- Getting the right seeds to Nepali farmers.
- An organic farmer visits the Vavilov Institute.
- Conservation: beyond hotspots, beyond markets.
- Letting the market deal with insect foods.
- Hybrids 101.
- Tamil Nadu women millet farmers show us all how it’s done. In Milan.
- Climate change? Let them eat rice bean.
- End of an era at the Land Institute.
- And the biggest environmental footprint goes to…lamb.
- Drought tolerance: a geneticist explains.
- International wheat meeting in the news.
- How does the European seed industry support crop diversity conservation and use? Let me map that for you.
Preserving the canon of taste
Fascinating article in Aeon magazine by Jill Neimark, exploring the role of specific, older varieties in the experience of taste. I won’t steal her thunder here, just urge you to read it. I will, however, cavil at one statement:
All commercial apples, including Granny Smiths, have been hybridised to a sugary monotone.
That’s simply not true, unless hybridised means something else in Georgia.
If they’re called Granny Smith, their genetics should be the same. If they taste dreadful from the supermarket, and astonishing picked up from a roadside stand “by a white-frame house on a curving, shady lane by Lake Allatoona,” that’s the result of nurture, not nature.
But please ignore my quibbles — and I have others — unless you agree that sometimes accuracy matters.
Nibbles: Summer holidays, Tajik bread, Farm to pizza, Västerbottensost, Diverse bananas, Banana wine, Chinese agroforestry, Peak coffee, Responsible oil palm, Model chickens, Damn you NS
- Ah, summer and its funny medieval holidays.
- Making bread in Tajikistan.
- Making pizza in Sussex.
- Making cheese in (one village in) Sweden.
- Diversifying bananas in Queensland.
- Diversifying banana products in Kenya.
- Diversifying with trees in China.
- Better diversify coffee.
- I see your responsible soy and raise you responsible oil palm.
- Cocks of the walk.
- I’m so annoyed the New Scientist article on breeding less bitter veggies is behind a paywall that I won’t even link to it. Google it, if you must.
Nibbles: Barley domestication, Apple pie, Mexican food & drink, CABI, Old seeds, IT
- Secret of barley brittle rachis revealed. In other news, there’s a Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls.
- Bramley apple pie filling protected. But from who?
- Participatively bred Oaxacan maize finds a market niche.
- Have some tequila with that participatively bred Oaxacan maize.
- “We can call a government and tell them our data is telling us that a pest is on the way.”
- The coolness of seeds.
- Yeah but “[g]ood seed in the wrong place is no longer good seed.”