- 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: Monocultures redux, Seedless watermelons, Red kiwifruit, Herbaria problems, Forest foods, Sorghum beer, SIRGEALC, Chinese veggies, Organic tomatoes, Andean women, Rise origins, Fermentation
- Deploy your cover crop diversity in time rather than space. But deploy it.
- Triploid goodness.
- Searching for a red kiwi.
- Herbaria on the rack.
- Let them eat non-timber forest products.
- Sorghum spurts in Kenya. Because beer.
- Sign up for SIRGEALC 10.
- Knowing your 菠菜 from your 西洋菜.
- 400 tomato varieties. No pesticides. No water. No problem.
- Women are conserving Andean crops. Sure, though with some occasional help from genebanks.
- The Rice Origins Wars continue.
- Sauerkraut changed the world.
Nibbles: Organic research, Plant models, Tabasco peppers, Andean shepherds, Weird pigs, Wild rice harvesting, Heritage ducks, Nutrient content
- An investment in organic research. At last.
- Plant models go online. Not those kinds of models.
- Where the peppers for Tabasco sauce come from.
- Apparently, “[w]hite alpacas have been overbred.” But not that kind of breeding, I think.
- Pigs are weird.
- Learn how to make poles. Yes, those kinds of poles.
- Even ducks can be heritage.
- Higher carbon dioxide bad for nutrition.
Nibbles: AVRDC genebank, Grits, Sikhs & parmesan, Congolese gouda, New rice, Poisonous plants, Bush tucker, Co-evolution, Amazonian medicinals, Native American usufruct
- World Vegetable Centre looking for a genebank manager.
- What’s a grit?
- Who did you say saved parmesan? Who did you say is making gouda?
- Philippines gets some new rice varieties. No, but these are climate-resilient.
- A poisonous plants gardens fits perfectly with my mood today.
- Involve native people in the development of a native foods industry. Well, duh.
- Blame butterflies for broccoli.
- There are a lot of medicinal plants in the Amazon.
- Wild rice (wild but not rice) vs pipeline.
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.